amendment of the law

Andy Sawford Excerpts

Tuesday 25th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves]

The hon. Gentleman will know that the Institute for Fiscal Studies has counted the costs of what this Government have done. Taking into account all the changes to taxes, including VAT, which he voted to increase from 17.5% to 20% despite what was in his party’s manifesto, changes to tax credits and benefits have cost the average family £891. It is a case of giving with one hand but taking much, much more with the other.

[Andy Sawford (Corby) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend talks about a Budget for the doers. Yesterday I met three young people in my constituency aged 22, 24 and 23 who had never had proper long-term jobs because they had worked for agencies and on zero-hours contracts. If the Chancellor cared about doers and young people, his Budget would have addressed those issues.

[Rachel Reeves]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. As he knows, Labour’s compulsory jobs guarantee would benefit people exactly like the young people he met in Corby. It would guarantee a job for every young person who has been out of work for a year, giving them real hope and opportunity and utilising their skills and talents.

Welfare Reforms and Poverty

Andy Sawford Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Michael Meacher (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House believes that a commission of inquiry should be established to investigate the impact of the Government’s welfare reforms on the incidence of poverty.

I am very grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for giving the House the opportunity to debate this issue, which has been seriously neglected over the past three years. I am pleased to move the motion, which appears in my name and the names of Members from other parties.

It is clear that something terrible is happening across the face of Britain. We are seeing the return of absolute poverty, which has not existed in this country since the Victorian age, more than a century ago. Absolute poverty is when people do not have the money to pay for even their most basic needs. The evidence of that is all around us. There are at least 345 food banks and, according to the Trussell Trust, emergency food aid was given to 350,000 households for at least three days in the last year. The Red Cross is setting up centres to help the destitute, just as it does in developing countries. A study that was published two months ago shows that even in prosperous areas of the country, such as London, more than a quarter of the population is living in poverty. This point is really scary: according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, for the first time, the number of people in working families who are living in poverty, at 6.7 million, is greater than the number of people in workless and retired families who are living in poverty, at 6.3 million.

The Department for Work and Pensions published new data two months ago—it was pretty reluctant to do this, and one can see why—showing that the use of sanctions, which means depriving people of all their benefits for several weeks at a time, had increased by 126% since 2010 and, most strikingly of all, that 120 disabled people who had been receiving jobseeker’s allowance had been given a three-year fixed duration sanction in the previous year. Figures from the Department for Communities and Local Government—these are the last that I will quote, although there are many more that I could quote—show that there are now more than 2,000 families who have been placed in emergency bed-and-breakfast accommodation after losing their homes. The 5% rise in the overall homelessness figures last year included nearly 9,000 families with children, which is the equivalent of one family losing their home every 15 minutes.

What impact have the so-called welfare reforms, which would more accurately be described as social security knock-backs, had on the families who have been affected? The best evidence comes from the Northern Housing Consortium, which carried out a survey three months ago of a representative sample of people living in social housing. It found that a third of families spent less than £20 a week on food and that the average spend on food per person per day was precisely £2.10. That is a third less than those families were able to afford three months before that. The proportion of households that had to make debt repayments of more than £40 a week had doubled and the average level of debt was £2,250. That might not sound a lot to us, but to people with that standard of living it is an enormous and daunting sum. A third of families had council tax debt, and households were having to spend 16% more on gas and electricity. Those are deplorable figures of profound impoverishment in an economy that is still the sixth largest in the world.

[Andy Sawford (Corby) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing this incredibly important debate. Does he also recognise the impact of 2.7 million people losing out through the Government’s changes to council tax benefit, many of them disabled people, veterans and some of the most vulnerable in our communities?

[Mr Meacher]

I have already made slight reference to that, but my hon. Friend is entirely right. The change is quite small, but its impact can push very poor families into deep poverty.

What are the causes of the emergence of absolute poverty? The biggest cause is the huge rise in sanctioning: depriving someone of all their benefit entitlement for a month in the first instance, for three months in the second instance and, on a third infringement, for three years!

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

Ministers—and certainly some Tory Back Benchers, as we have just heard—are in a state of denial about the increasing poverty in this country resulting from Government policies. They want us to believe—the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) is as good an example as any—that we are dealing with the work-shy and scroungers, with people who have no justification for receiving benefits in the first place. It is to a large extent a repeat of what I witnessed during the Thatcher years. My right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher), whom I congratulate on initiating this motion, will recall how we repeatedly used to point out what was happening in the country at large under Thatcher—increasing poverty and deprivation. Ministers and Tory Back Benchers back in the 1980s simply denied it: poverty did not exist; it was a figment of our imaginations. It was not then and it is not now.

The Child Poverty Action Group has estimated that 60% of the current benefit cuts fall on those who are in work. I totally reject, as do my right hon. and hon. Friends, that those who are not in employment are scroungers or not justified in receiving social security benefits. The severely disabled are among those being hit by the cuts.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that child poverty will rise during this Parliament from 2.5 million to 3.2 million—an interesting figure, and I would argue that this debate is justified by that alone, and it explains why my right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton and I urge taking action. The figures I have quoted mean, according to the IFS, that almost 24% of children in the UK are likely to live in poverty by 2015 next year. What sort of country are we—supposedly one of the most advanced industrialised countries in the world, yet 24% of our children will be living in poverty by next year? This compares with just over 19% in 2011—and that figure was far too high. The IFS goes further, projecting that, unless there are changes, current policies will impoverish a further 700,000 children between 2015 and 2020. That means some 4 million children growing up in poverty in the UK.

I had thought that Parliament in previous times, such as from 1945—I cannot claim to have been here at the time—was determined that poverty should largely be abolished, that full employment should occur and that no one should ever be in need again to the extent that people were before the second world war, yet we seem to be returning to that situation, which we hoped would be abolished for ever.

The policies being pursued—only 1% uprating of so many benefits, including child benefit; the change from the retail prices index to the consumer prices index as a basis for calculating benefits; the reductions in working tax credits and the rest—all add up to explain why we need this debate on poverty. All this, of course, is without what the Chancellor has threatened—a further £12 billion-worth of benefit cuts that he would like to see introduced after 2015.

Is it surprising that so many people in need are turning to food banks, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton mentioned? During Education questions in September last year, the Education Secretary said that when people used such facilities as food banks, it was

“often the result of decisions that they have taken which mean they are not best able to manage their finances.” —[Official Report, 9 September 2013; Vol. 567, c. 681.]

That was his explanation—a leading member of the Cabinet—for food banks. The Trussell Trust described those comments as “not just insensitive”, as they obviously were to say the least, but “completely inappropriate”.

As anyone would know, people do not just go to a food bank for fun to ask for this, that or the other. It has to be authorised; people need vouchers and authorisation before food can be given. Does anyone in this House believe that people go along to food banks for the fun of it and to get a bit of free food? They go because they have no alternative. They have such limited incomes for bringing up their children, and I thought many of them feel humiliated by having to attend food banks. I would feel humiliated, and I am not alone. I would imagine that virtually every Member would feel humiliated if, as a result of limited income, poverty and so forth, they had to go to a food bank. How easy is it to justify that to the children? “Why are you going to a food bank, dad? Why do we not go to Tesco’s like everyone else?” Many children would ask such questions. We know why people go to food banks.

What about the figures? In 2009-10, about 41,000 people used food banks. By 2011-12, it had gone up to 128,000. As I think my right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton mentioned, the latest figures from the Trussell Trust suggest that some 350,000 people are using them. Given that—fortunately—other organisations provide such facilities, the total number is about half a million. Half a million people in this country are using food banks! Are we proud of that? Do we feel that the House of Commons is doing its duty, and carrying out its obligation to deal with poverty and deprivation? Let me say it again: at the beginning of this year, 2014, half a million people are resorting to food banks because they have no alternative.

Other problems are being caused by cuts. For example, as a result of the impact of the cuts on local authorities, many home care visits are limited to 15 minutes. Those visits would not have been authorised in the first place unless they were necessary. Most of them involve disabled people and, in many cases, elderly people—in my age group or older—who cannot look after themselves. The number of 15-minute visits has increased by 15% over the last few years, and 60% of local authorities commission such visits. Why is that? In the main, it is not because any of them—including Conservative councils—are insensitive, but because, given the impact of the cuts, they see no alternative.

[Andy Sawford]

My hon. Friend has made an important point about the impact of the social care cuts. Is he aware that the 10% of local authorities that are the most deprived in the country face cuts six times higher than those faced by the 10% that are the most affluent?

[Mr Winnick]

That too is an important point, which I hope the Minister will bear in mind when he winds up the debate.

For those who have limited means, for those who cannot find work and for the disabled, the last few years—especially the last three—have become a desperate struggle for survival. I repeat what I said earlier. We should be ashamed, deeply ashamed, that so many of our fellow citizens—and let us not forget for one moment that they are our fellow citizens—are having to live in such circumstances. I only hope that there will be a change of Government, and that the new Government will do what I have every confidence that they will do. I hope that they will develop policies that will make life easier for those in need, as a Labour Government did previously. I was a bit of a critic of the last Labour Government on occasion, but there is no doubt that, overwhelmingly, my constituents were greatly assisted by their policies. I said so at the time, and I have said so many times since then.

This debate is essential, and I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton on introducing it. I hope that, as a result, Ministers and Conservative Back Benchers will recognise how vital it is that change should come.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andy Sawford Excerpts

Monday 14th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Mike Penning)]

I have looked at this very closely in the past week. Of course, lots of groups would want us to look at individual cases. The way the assessment is done is not rigid, and it will evolve. We will look at this carefully, but I cannot make promises on individual groups today.

[Andy Sawford (Corby) (Lab/Co-op)]

T3. Will the Secretary of State confirm whether benefits officers been have told not to sanction people when the only job offered is on a zero-hours contract? Do Ministers recognise that the new claimant commitments mean that people will not actually be able to sign zero-hours contracts without risking losing their in-work benefits?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The claimant commitment is about people’s obligations under the existing terms. They will have to seek work, attend interviews and try to get a job, and once they are offered a job they must take it. Those are the sanctions coming up under universal credit. People will lose benefits for three months for a first offence, six months for a second offence and three years for a third offence. Right now, zero-hours contracts are legal. If Labour wants to change the law, we want to hear that from the hon. Gentleman.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andy Sawford Excerpts

Monday 11th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Andy Sawford (Corby) (Lab/Co-op)]

I met the mother of Hayden, a three-year old boy in my constituency, who has just received a letter stating that she must now pay the bedroom tax. Hayden has sleep difficulties and often has disturbed nights. Should he be forced to share a room with his four-year-old sister who will now also be disturbed, or will it all be okay because there is a tiny amount of discretionary funding?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I do wonder that the Labour party, which sat in government for 13 years, never once raised the issue of people living in overcrowded accommodation, and never once seemed to care that huge numbers of people were on the waiting list. Nevertheless, Labour Members bleat about those who are under-occupying and are being subsidised by poorer people who cannot find accommodation.

Housing Benefit (Under-occupancy Penalty)

Andy Sawford Excerpts

Wednesday 27th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend.

Before we go into detail about the ending of the spare room subsidy, it is worth providing a little more detail about the fiscal context in which this measure is being taken. In the final year of the Labour Government, borrowing was £150 billion a year. This measure saves £500,000 a year, so if we were trying to fill Labour’s deficit by measures of this sort, we would need 300 such measures to tackle that scale of borrowing. I expected the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford), who opened the debate, to suggest alternative sources of revenue not just for this measure, but for every single welfare spending reduction that she has opposed—all £12 billion of it.

[Andy Sawford (Corby) (Lab/Co-op)]

If the hon. Gentleman’s proposition in setting out the context—on which he and I profoundly disagree—is that those who, in effect, should foot whatever difference there is between us in public finances are the people affected by this bedroom tax, I must say that he is absolutely wrong. May I give him the specific example of my constituent Cheryl Maskens? Cheryl Maskens was homeless and was offered a two-bedroom property. Had she refused that property she would have been told that she had not accepted re-housing. Should she be the person who loses out in this scenario?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

A lot of Members want to speak and we are only up to the Front Bench speeches. Can Members make sure that if there are to be interventions, they are short? Those who want to catch my eye but intervene too much will go down the list, and they will understand why.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Webb]

At the risk of straying into other legislation, let me point out that when we had to make difficult decisions on benefit rates—which, of course, the hon. Lady opposed—we specifically exempted DLA, attendance allowance and the support component of employment and support allowance as a sign of our commitment to disabled people.

The hon. Lady suggests that we should exempt a third of those affected by the policy. As she will understand, this measure is partly about reducing the deficit and partly about making better use of the housing stock. Receiving DLA is not synonymous with needing a spare bedroom: that is the point. Someone who needs a spare bedroom can approach the local authority, and we have given local authorities funds for that purpose, but a blanket exemption of people receiving DLA does not correlate with the need for a spare bedroom.

As my noble Friend Lord Freud announced on 15 October last year, these measures will be monitored and evaluated over a two-year period from April this year. Initial findings will be available in 2014, and the final report will be published late in 2015.

[Andy Sawford]

Will the Minister give way?

[Steve Webb]

I have already given way to the hon. Gentleman.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Byrne]

The Secretary of State cannot defend the fact that families of serving soldiers will be hit by this policy while those on remand and accused of the most serious offences we can imagine will not be hit by it. I do not think that the Secretary of State, of all people, will want to defend that. He should be speaking to his colleagues the Secretary of State for Defence and the Prime Minister, who I understand is the Chair of the Sub-Committee on the Armed Forces Covenant, and he should be bringing to this House safeguards for the families of armed personnel out on service, should he not? As he remains in his place, it is clear that he is not going to bring forward those safeguards for the families of people serving on the front line. The House will be disappointed to have observed that.

Foster parents will also be hurt. Again, we heard nothing from the Minister today about how foster parent families are going to be helped. [Interruption.] I listened very carefully to what the Minister said, and he said nothing today that countermands what he sent out in a recent circular, which says:

“a household that has an extra room for a current or potential foster child will be treated as under-occupying.”

Families in that position will be hit, therefore. [Interruption.] We then hear that under universal credit a couple where someone is a pensioner and someone is not will also be hit. [Interruption.]

Over all this, of course, looms the truth that two-thirds of the people hit by this bedroom tax will be disabled. [Interruption.] The Minister has been pleading from a sedentary position that the discretionary housing payment will somehow help. He will, no doubt, have seen the National Housing Federation research that found that 200,000 people who will be hit by this bedroom tax are on disability living allowance. The NHF estimates that if we spent all the DHP money helping those people, it would help 73,000 people, so there would be 127,000 people in receipt of DLA who would get absolutely no help whatever. Of course, that would leave nothing for foster parents either. I am afraid that the Minister cannot simply plead that the DHP is of some help to foster parents, those who are disabled and people whose houses have been adapted. The truth is very different, and he has been found out this afternoon.

[Andy Sawford]

Much has been said about particular groups who will be hit by this policy and my right hon. Friend is right to talk about the impact on disabled people and foster families. There are also, however, people like my constituent Hayley Duncan, who has two boys aged one and 13 who are now expected to share the same bedroom. I can honestly say I would not ask two children of mine of such different ages to share the same bedroom. Does my right hon. Friend think this is right? Is there hypocrisy here?

[Mr Byrne]

Of course there is. The Minister, unlike his party colleague the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), did not resile from his support for a whopping great tax cut for millionaires at the same time as Hayley Duncan and her children are being hit by this bedroom tax.

This is a policy that is unique in its cruelty. It sets out to tackle the problem of under-occupancy, and the Minister made much of the 1 million spare bedrooms he wants somehow to bring on to the housing market. As he knows, however, the policy will only save the money chalked up in the Treasury scorecard if it fails. That is the reality. About £490 million is earmarked to be saved by this policy over the course of this year, but it will be saved only if 660,000 households are hit for £14 a week for 52 weeks a year. That is how those savings will be delivered. This is not about bringing spare bedrooms on to the market; it is about hurting vulnerable people and asking them to pay extra.

What is particularly troubling to many Opposition Members is the Minister’s refusal to acknowledge that in many parts of the country there will simply not be the smaller houses for people to move into. Again the NHF has been very clear about that. In large parts of the country there is simply not the housing stock for people hit by this tax to move into. The Government have removed any shelter where vulnerable people can take cover before opening fire. This is a policy of unique cruelty, therefore. The Government are not seeking to solve under-occupancy. Instead, they are simply seeking to make the poorest and most vulnerable even poorer. As the Secretary of State once cared about poverty, perhaps he would like to justify that fact?

Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Andy Sawford Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

I rise to oppose Third Reading. I have not been in the House for as long as the Secretary of State, but never in my years here have I seen so much taken from so many so fast. It is a disgrace that the Government should have rammed the Bill through the House in just two weeks. I hope that the other place will have listened hard to our debates today and seen how little time has been granted to us in the Commons to debate measures that will hurt thousands and thousands of our constituents.

In the fortnight since the Bill was introduced, claim after claim made by the Government has simply fallen apart. Originally, we were told that the Bill would not hurt working people, that the Government would protect disabled people, and that they cared about “family-raisers”, to use the Prime Minister’s term, yet in vote after vote tonight the Government have refused to stand by their word. They have refused to protect working people or to offer safeguards for disabled people, and we have heard nothing remotely credible from them about how child poverty will be tackled. After tonight’s debate, no one will believe that there is such a thing as compassionate conservatism. To be frank, it was always a wild claim and, lo and behold, so it has turned out.

When the Bill was first presented to us, we were invited to believe that it was squarely aimed at those of our neighbours who were “sleeping off a life on benefits”, in supposed contrast with a Budget that allegedly helped working people and gave effect to the Prime Minister’s determination, expressed to the party faithful—their number is dwindling—at his party’s conference. He said:

“They call us the party of the better-off”.

That is true; we do. He continued:

“no: we are the party of the want to be better-off, those who strive to make a better life for themselves and their families.”

How does the Bill help those who are striving to be better off? The Institute for Fiscal Studies could not have been blunter: 7 million working people will be hurt by the Bill. The impact of changes announced in the autumn statement will be, between now and April 2015, to reduce the real income of the one-earner working family by £534 on average, net of any increase in the personal allowance. That is why this is a strivers’ tax, pure and simple, which we will oppose.

[Andy Sawford (Corby) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that it makes much more sense to uprate by inflation in this Parliament and then take stock, with a proper zero-based budgeting look at this in the next Parliament?

[Mr Byrne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that it would make sense to uprate in line with inflation for the rest of this Parliament, but frankly we do not know what kind of mess will be inherited in the next Parliament, which is why my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor is right to say that a zero-based review will be needed.

In the seven minutes that remain, I want to make two more points. One is about disabled people, who the Chancellor and Secretary of State said would be protected under the Bill. The Chancellor said that he would “support the vulnerable” and that disability benefits would be

“increased in line with inflation”—[Official Report, 5 December 2012; Vol. 554, c. 879.]

Then we learned the truth: 3.4 million disabled households will be hit by the Bill, admitted the Pensions Minister in a written answer. On average, they will be £156 a year worse off. Hundreds of thousands of people on employment and support allowance—people who the Department says have a disability—will be £87.50 a year worse off.

State Pension Reform

Andy Sawford Excerpts

Monday 14th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

I am grateful. Carers receive the carer’s allowance, and there are other sorts of carer’s credits. Carers will thus end up with credits for the full £144—or whatever the final rate ends up being—so this has the potential to be a significant benefit to them. The hon. Lady is absolutely right that it is all very well for us to talk about simplicity, but people need to experience simplicity. That is why the White Paper provides an example of a pension statement. It is a single piece of paper saying, “You have built this amount up; if you do this many more years, you will get the full pension.” Everybody will know the rate: it will be a standard figure, and much harder for future Governments to tinker with.

[Andy Sawford (Corby) (Lab/Co-op)]

I have been contacted by my constituent, Mrs Slater. She is a widow, aged 59. She tells me she was informed on her husband’s death that she would benefit from his working life and national insurance contributions. She is now concerned that a flat rate will mean that his hard work will no longer be counted when she retires. Will Mrs Slater will be better off or worse off under these proposals?

[Steve Webb]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, because I understand the concern that any change creates for people. In 2017, I assure him, we will work out people’s pension rights under our new system— 35 years for the full £144, with deductions knocked off for past periods of contracting out—and if that figure amounts to less than the rights someone has already built up, they will start from the higher one. We will honour the past. People will not build up new rights under those sorts of arrangements, but those they already have will be honoured.

Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Andy Sawford Excerpts

Tuesday 8th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

I spoke to the former right honourable Member for Redditch yesterday and I set out—[Interruption.] Absolutely. I set out the substance of today’s debate and said that we have a choice between the Tory way and the Labour way to bring down welfare spending. The Tory way is to hit working families; the Labour way is to help people work.

[Andy Sawford (Corby) (Lab/Co-op)]

I share the concern about the Bill’s impact on public service workers. Has my right hon. Friend seen—I am sure he has—the research published over the weekend by the Children’s Society? It shows that 40,000 soldiers will see their household incomes cut if the Bill goes through, along with 300,000 nurses, 150,000 primary school teachers and 9,300 of my constituents, which is why I will be voting against it today.

[Mr Byrne]

My hon. Friend is already speaking very eloquently in the House. Some 40,000 soldiers, 300,000 nurses and 150,000 primary and nursery school teachers will be hit by this Bill. I suggest to the House that they are making a much bigger contribution to the health and well-being of this country than the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is accusing them of being the people whose blinds are closed in the morning.

Remploy

Andy Sawford Excerpts

Monday 10th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Esther McVey]

It is a pleasure to debate with the hon. Gentleman again. I have had two Westminster Hall debates with him on this subject, and we have spoken on various occasions. He knows only too well, from the written and verbal replies that I have given to him, what we are doing, what is happening and what has happened in his constituency.

[Andy Sawford (Corby) (Lab/Co-op)]

As the great-grandson of a British soldier who lost his arm in battle but worked all his life, may I say to the Minister how important it is to our national character that we provide employment for disabled people who can work and provide support for those who cannot? Will she undertake to look into the reality gap in Corby and east Northamptonshire between her rhetoric about providing support for people to get into employment and the daily distress of being harassed by Atos and finding it incredibly difficult to find employment?

[Esther McVey]

We are working with and supporting these people. I am more than happy to meet the hon. Gentleman to see what is happening. However, as I have said, our main and only priority is to get all these people into work and support them as best we can.