Personal Independence Payment: Regulations

Andrew Stephenson Excerpts

Wednesday 29th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Debbie Abrahams]

Absolutely. It is very important to note the association between ill health and disability in former industrial areas, and as my hon. Friend rightly says, the impact of assessments that cannot be done right first time. Why is that? Why have the Government not been able to get assessments right first time?

[Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Debbie Abrahams]

If the hon. Gentleman will give me just two minutes, I will make a little bit more progress and come back to him.

Someone who experiences psychological distress because of a mental health condition can score a maximum of 10 points under “planning and following a journey”, unless they also have a cognitive, sensory or physical impairment. That falls short of the 12 points needed to qualify for the higher rate of the mobility component. In the 2016 case of MH v. the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the upper tribunal ruled that psychological distress by itself cannot satisfy descriptors under activity two unless the psychological distress causes a change in someone’s physical condition. It is therefore the regulations, not the tribunal rulings, that undermine the intention of the primary legislation by restricting the number of people whose mobility is severely limited by their mental health condition who are able to qualify for the enhanced mobility rate of PIP.

[Andrew Stephenson]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way. It is very important that we get the regulations right, but does the shadow Minister accept that more people with mental health conditions qualify for support under PIP than under the old disability living allowance regulations?

[Debbie Abrahams]

No, I certainly do not agree with that at all. I will come on to this in a moment, but the mental health charity Mind has produced data, based on the Government’s own statistics, that show that 55% of DLA claimants with a mental health condition will receive either nothing or a reduced amount when they transfer to PIP. I am afraid this is another fallacy from the Government.

Personal Independence Payments

Andrew Stephenson Excerpts

Wednesday 15th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)]

Will the Secretary of State confirm that this Government are investing more in benefits for disabled people and more in mental health than ever before?

[Damian Green]

I can confirm that, and I have already quoted the specific figure for disability benefits. We now spend £11.4 billion on mental health services every year, and we will be spending more on disability benefits in every year of this Parliament than was spent in 2010.

State Pension Age

Andrew Stephenson Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Again, that is a wholly legitimate question for the hon. Gentleman to raise. As I said to his party’s spokesman, that matter is within scope for the reviewer, if he wishes to raise it. The reviewer and his team will have to decide how to get the balance right. It is certainly within scope for the hon. Gentleman and his party to ask the reviewer to look at that balance and to see whether some of the presumptions are necessary, and I urge him to do so.

[Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)]

The Secretary of State has been a champion of pensioners with the triple lock, the single-tier pension and automatic enrolment, which is now benefiting more than 6 million people. Does he agree that, in the light of the cross-party support for an independent review in 2014, it is rank hypocrisy for Labour Front Benchers to try to make political capital out of it today?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I genuinely regret that the consensus that was achieved for the 2014 legislation has been tossed aside in a matter of hours by the Opposition, apparently over breakfast this morning. [Interruption.] I urge them, instead of chuntering away on the Front Bench, to remember what their spokesman said in 2014. He said categorically:

“we do not oppose the Bill”.—[Official Report, 29 October 2013; Vol. 569, c. 870.]

They agreed with the regular review. I urge the Opposition to get back to the sensible position of wanting to co-operate over changes to the pension age.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Stephenson Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Vara]

It is important that the hon. Gentleman appreciates that the new state pension is based on national insurance contributions. He will be aware that for many years many people have contracted out, and a small portion of their national insurance has gone towards a work pension or a private pension. If they add the new state pension to their other pension, which was paid for by national insurance contributions, they will find that in many cases they will be better off than they would be under the new state pension, which is £155.65.

[Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)]

Will not the new state pension remove injustices that have persisted for far too long, benefiting women and low earners especially?

[Mr Vara]

Absolutely. As of April this year, with a new state pension and the triple lock, people will be £1,000 better off than they would have been under the old system whereby pensions were uprated. The triple lock will benefit people by £1,000 by April this year.

Child Poverty

Andrew Stephenson Excerpts

Thursday 25th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

It is interesting that the hon. Gentleman says that, because I genuinely believe that we should expect British employers to pay a decent wage to the people they employ, and I am engaged in that process. I do not think that he is right, as I think it will take a much shorter time to get employers to face up to their responsibilities, but as he has offered his support I am very happy to talk about it.

[Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)]

I thank the Secretary of State for taking time to visit Nelson job centre with me. In Pendle, we have some fantastic local organisations, such as branches of Christians Against Poverty, the local citizens advice bureau, Colne Open Door and many others, running job clubs. What is his Department doing to work with such organisations and charities to help families out of poverty?

Post Office Card Account

Andrew Stephenson Excerpts

Tuesday 16th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his characteristically enthusiastic welcome for this very important announcement that will help to safeguard the post office network. The big contrast between the past four or five years and the preceding 13 years is the hours that hon. Members are not having to spend running “Save our post office” campaigns. The hon. Gentleman talks about decline. The policy of the previous Government was to have rounds of post office closures; this Government have invested £2 billion in preserving the network. This contract will be a further fillip for postmasters.

The hon. Gentleman asks what we are doing to reverse the decline in Post Office card account use. Back in 2005 there were 4.2 million people using POCAs, and in 2010 there were 3.4 million. Under Labour the number of people using POCAs fell by 800,000, so the idea that continuing decline in the use of POCAs is a new phenomenon is news to me. What is happening is that older pensioners, sadly, die and do not use a POCA any more. Newly retired pensioners tend to be more familiar with banking, so the number of pensioners using the POCA will gradually decline, but when Labour set up the previous POCA contract, it asked the Post Office to migrate 700,000 working-age people off these accounts to save money. In fact, this did not happen. When Labour set the contract, its intention was to reduce the scope.

I made it clear in my statement that we believe we will keep the POCA over the next seven years for pensioners. People of working age, as they come within the scope of universal credit, will need a transactional bank account, so although the most vulnerable universal credit recipients will continue to have access to POCAs, we will seek to ensure that wherever possible people of working age have a transactional banking account that will allow them to benefit from direct debits, budgeting and so on. That is where they want to be.

The hon. Gentleman asked about post office locals. I am advised by my hon. Friend the Minister with responsibility for postal services that customer satisfaction, which is presumably the yardstick in these matters, is up in post office local branches. The hon. Gentleman asked about privacy. Presumably, when customers decide whether they are satisfied or not, privacy is one of the things they consider. In answering our questions, they say that they are more satisfied than they were before the investment went into these post offices.

The hon. Gentleman asked about efficiency savings in the contract. Unlike the previous Government, we do look to make those savings, but we have not reduced the price that sub-postmasters get for each transaction. We could have said to Post Office Ltd, “Save us some money—give the sub-postmasters less”, but we did not do that because the sub-post offices are our priority. He asked about the figure of over £400 million. That is not a target that the Government have set for ourselves.

The hon. Gentleman asked about other services. We are exploring the use of identity-related services at the post office. We run a cross-government service called Tell Us Once for customers to report births and deaths, and we are looking at whether that can be carried out at the post office and linked with ID verification. There is plenty of potential for new services. Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency counter services have gone into post offices, as has Check and Send, an excellent service from the Passport Office. The crucial thing about this seven-year agreement is that it allows plenty of time for new services to be developed so that our post offices have a long and prosperous future.

[Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)]

Between 1997 and 2010, under Labour, Pendle lost 17 sub-post office branches. I am therefore delighted by this statement on the Post Office card account, with £250 million of support and a new seven-year contract. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the front office counter service framework will allow the Post Office to bid for, and win, more Government business in future?

[Steve Webb]

Yes, my hon. Friend is right. The front office counter framework was competitively tendered. The Post Office won because of its unrivalled network and what it was offering, and that meant that the contract could be awarded much more straightforwardly. Using the framework, we have already been able to award other contracts for DVLA counter services, for example, and the Post Office will be able to bid for other Government contracts as they arise.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Stephenson Excerpts

Monday 3rd November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman talks about disabled people having higher costs; he is obviously talking about the personal independence payment, which is the help we give to people to help them to stay or become independent. The BBC report was talking about employment and support allowance, which is an out-of-work benefit.

[Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)]

6. What support his Department has provided for young people seeking employment.

[The Minister for Employment (Esther McVey)]

In the past 12 months, youth unemployment has fallen by a record-breaking 253,000. This Government have developed an array of support for young people including: work experience, sector-based work academies, traineeships, the Work programme and increasing apprenticeship numbers.

[Andrew Stephenson]

I thank the Minister for her answer. Youth unemployment in my constituency has halved since 2012. I recently visited my local Asda in Colne to see the work it is doing with local jobcentres. What more can my right hon. Friend offer to end youth unemployment in Pendle?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Duncan Smith]

We have already had court cases that leave this very clearly with the Department. Our view is that those who need to be exempted are exempted, and we have left discretionary payments of some £380 million with local authorities to make those local discretionary decisions themselves. The hon. Lady’s local authority can do just that.

[Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)]

T10. Will my right hon. Friend join me in welcoming this Government’s approach to the national minimum wage and its rise to £6.50 last month, which is the biggest cash increase since 2008 and 3% above inflation?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

That is exactly what has happened. The minimum wage has risen faster under this Government than under the previous Government, and we are driving for greater acceptance among businesses.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Stephenson Excerpts

Monday 14th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I just do not agree with that because the reality is that the Work programme figures show that it is performing incredibly well and it will just get better: some 72% of the first tranche or cohort are off benefits; 380,000 people who before were written off by the last Government are now in work; 168,000 are now in sustained employment; and we now know that 90% of those who are in sustained employment go on to another year at least of employment, which is better than any of the last Government’s programmes—cheaper, more effective and better for those trying to get into work.

[Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)]

T6. As this month marks the first anniversary of automatic enrolment, will the Minister update the House on progress so far?

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)]

Yes, as my hon. Friend says, it has been a year since the first firm automatically enrolled. This has been a striking success. Over 1.5 million employees have been automatically enrolled and the staying-in rates have been far higher, with over 90% of employees who have been placed in a workplace pension remaining in it. It is a superb start and I congratulate all those who played a part in it.

State Pension Reform

Andrew Stephenson Excerpts

Monday 14th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

We do envisage that there will be a system of voluntary contributions. We will have to examine issues such as the price for a year of voluntary contributions, because obviously the pension is bigger, but we envisage that the idea that someone can fill gaps will still be a part of the system.

[Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)]

I very much welcome today’s statement that a single-tier pension is going to apply to new pensioners after 2017. On Sunday, I met a constituent at my supermarket advice surgery in ASDA in Colne who is in receipt of the basic state pension and pension credit but is unsure whether, as part of wider reforms, pension credit would be replaced by the new universal credit and other pensioner benefits. Will the Minister give clarification on that point?

[Steve Webb]

There will be knock-on effects when the universal credit is introduced: because housing benefit will no longer be paid for people of working age, we will have to incorporate housing benefit for pensioners in the pension credit system. There will be knock-on changes, but we envisage, certainly for the foreseeable future, a continuing separate pension credit system.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Stephenson Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)]

1. What steps his Department is taking to support young people into work.

[Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)]

14. What steps his Department is taking to support young people into work.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)]

Work experience and apprenticeships are central to improving the prospects of young unemployed people. In this year’s Budget the Chancellor announced funding for an additional 80,000 work experience placements, with eligibility widened to cover the 18 to 24 age group. In addition, we have announced tens of thousands of new apprenticeships. We will also be providing early access to the Work programme for young people from the most challenged backgrounds.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Grayling]

The Government have a very proactive campaign to engage employers, working with them to identify work experience places for young unemployed people. We have already located many thousands of opportunities for young people to gain their first foothold of experience in the workplace. In addition, my colleagues at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills are working hard to engage employers in providing apprenticeship opportunities. So far they are being particularly successful in doing so and have met their targets for apprenticeships.

[Andrew Stephenson]

I welcome what my right hon. Friend has said about the importance of apprenticeships. There are 615 unemployed young people in my constituency. What other measures will he put in place to ensure that those young people have the skills they need to compete in the workplace?

[Chris Grayling]

The other policy that we will be introducing later in the summer is work academies, which will provide a mix of a short-term segment of training and a period of work experience, again designed to provide young people with a first foothold in the workplace and to give opportunities to those who do not have previous qualifications with a view to trying to get them into employment and build a lasting career.