Debate on the Address

Anne Begg Excerpts

Wednesday 4th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Dame Anne Begg (Aberdeen South) (Lab)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I thank the hon. Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) for saying that he wants us. We want to be here too. It is important that people from across the whole UK, not just in Scotland, but in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, realise that any changes to the constitution in Scotland with regard to independence can affect the whole of the British isles, and we want to continue to be part of the UK.

I pay tribute to the hon. Members for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt) and for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) for their excellent speeches in proposing and seconding the Loyal Address. The hon. Member for Portsmouth North reminded us all about my predecessor Lady Tweedsmuir, who proposed the Loyal Address way back in 1957. I did realise that my constituency had produced a number of MPs who had proposed or seconded the Loyal Address, but I did not realise that Lady Tweedsmuir was the only one who had proposed it—the other four, including me in 2000, all seconded it. So Lady Tweedsmuir was the first and only woman until today to have proposed the Loyal Address. It was interesting to hear what the hon. Member for Portsmouth North said about what the then Opposition had said about Lady Tweedsmuir—I believe the phrase was “softly spoken”. I never met Priscilla Tweedsmuir, but everything I have heard about her suggests she was an indomitable woman and “softly spoken” would not necessarily have been the phrase that would have sprung to mind to describe her. Interestingly, she proposed the Loyal Address in her maiden speech in 1957—I learned that only today as well—and she lost the seat in 1966 to a young whippersnapper of a lawyer who came up from Glasgow and defeated her. His name was Donald Dewar. So we have had a nice history lesson.

I was looking for a bit more in the Queen’s Speech on the Government’s welfare reform and was disappointed to find only one indirect reference, and that was to the overall welfare budget being capped. That is a bit of a red herring because all Departments of all Governments set limits on their spend, which often have to be kept to. This was not what I was looking for. I was hoping the Government might give us some indication of how they are going to rescue their flagship policy of welfare reform in this Parliament. It needs to be rescued because a lot of it is falling apart, particularly universal credit and its roll-out. Its implementation has been disastrous and I would like the Government to be up front and say that the IT simply is not working, and that the roll-out is a farce and is not really happening at all. Universal credit is still in only very few areas and only about 6,000 people have been on it, whereas 8.5 million are expected to be on it eventually. Yet the Government are still not facing up to just how difficult it has been and will be, and the fact that the system is not working at all. Great hope is still being placed on some kind of digital solution that will come in later in the year, but then we are getting close to the general election. At the moment it is not working at all and I would prefer it if the Government had some idea of how it might be put back on track or, if that cannot be done, what should replace it.

My other concern is that the roll-out of the personal independence payment, which is being implemented at the same time, seems to be going the same way. That is not because the IT systems are a problem but because the assessment process seems to be taking far too long. The Government have rightly slowed down and stopped the migration of those currently on disability living allowance on to the new PIP, but new claimants, for whom there is no alternative but the new benefit, are waiting six, seven, eight, nine months before they get their determination, and sometimes even longer than that. I had an e-mail from someone who had applied last June and still had not heard whether they were going to get the payment. Clearly, there are serious problems with the implementation of the personal independence payment.

We did not hear what the Government will do to replace the work capability assessment. That has been a disaster for a number of years, but it has now reached a crisis point with the contract being taken away from Atos, which is still limping on and delivering the programme until a new contract can be let. As a result, nobody is being reassessed. For the people who were facing the trauma of a work capability assessment, not being reassessed might be quite a good thing. The Government have not said anything about what will replace the WCA or about what would be a better way of assessing people, because we will have to assess them, to see whether they are fit for work.

I was hopeful—perhaps it was a vain hope—that the Government might see sense on the bedroom tax. The policy has been a disaster, and I hope that they realise that it was ill considered and ill thought out. They should follow the example of Scotland, where, thanks to my Labour colleagues in the Scottish Parliament, the Scottish National party Government were dragged kicking and screaming to the table. John Swinney had said that the SNP Government did not want to do anything about the bedroom tax because they did not want to let Westminster off the hook. Finally, though, they agreed to mitigate the problem. It was felt that people who rent social housing are not the same people who rent in the private sector. Renting a social house for life is not the same as temporarily renting a house in the private sector. The tax was never going to work or achieve its policy aim of ensuring that people were appropriately housed because the right-sized houses for which people on housing benefit could qualify did not exist in the right areas. Many Back-Bench Members, particularly on the Government Benches, thought that whole areas of disabilities would be exempt from the bedroom tax but in reality they were not. I had hoped that this Government would look again at that policy, which, as I have said, was ill thought out and vindictive and malicious to people who had no choice but to continue to live in the same house.

Another issue is in-work poverty. We used to say that the best way out of poverty is work—in fact, we used to say that the only way out of poverty for someone of working age is work—but that is no longer true. Some 52% of families who are deemed to be living in poverty have at least one adult in work. Although there are welcome measures about the enforcement of the minimum wage, we need the Government to look again at the level of the minimum wage to ensure that work pays. If work pays, benefit does not need to be paid out to supplement the gap between what is earned and what is needed to live. That is the best way for any Government to save money, because they would be saving on the welfare spend. Money would no longer be used to subsidise employers who are not paying their employees a high enough rate, and the burden of that payment falls on the taxpayer in the form of welfare spend.

Let me raise the issue of the two pension Bills. I am not sure whether there will be two separate Bills, or just one pensions Bill, but, as it stands, the Bills appear to be pulling in different directions. Today, the Prime Minister mentioned only one part of pension reform, which was related to accessibility and liberalisation. The policy is welcome, but there are concerns about whether it will turn pension savings into savings rather than just pensions. People who are left with a pot will have to make very difficult decisions. If they have the right information, it could help to narrow down the choice. Clearly, the advice and help that people are given to make these decisions will be crucial.

At the same time, the Government want to introduce something that the Pensions Minister used to call defined ambition, which is now called collective defined contribution schemes or even target schemes, which spread the risk across a much wider range. In principle, that is a good thing. That is what the old final salary schemes did; they shared risk across the members—in fact, they mostly put the risk on the employer—rather than the risk falling on individuals. Certainly, one concern about the Government’s liberalisation plans is that the risk falls on the individual to make good choices about what they will do both in terms of investment when they are building up the pension in the accumulation stage and once they retire and are made to draw down. Any kind of collective risk is a good thing. However, it is difficult to understand how, if people have access to their individual pots, they can give up some of that power and access in order to be part of a collective scheme. The Government are talking about liberalisation at one end, but they are also making it less easy for people to have individual control over their pensions at the other. The collective DC schemes would have to be big in case a large number of members decided to draw down their own pot. How we define our own pot becomes much more difficult when we get into collective schemes.

Briefly, I welcome the child care proposals. Extra help with child care is always a good thing. However, they only fill the gap that was left by the Government when they made cuts to child care support, particularly to child care tax credits. An awful lot more could be done in that area.

Finally, it is good that the Government are to introduce a Bill to deal with modern-day slavery and human trafficking. My constituents, particularly from women’s groups, feel very strongly about the issue. They see it as a black mark against us, and a shame on us, that we still have in our society humans who are trafficked, who are forced into slavery and to work in the sex trade or, as happens in my constituency, in a domestic situation or in the agriculture or fishing industry. That Bill is absolutely welcome, and I am glad that the Government are taking action.