UN International Day of Persons with Disabilities

Anneliese Dodds Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

I welcome the new Minister to his place and thank my wonderful hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova) for securing this debate and for her tireless campaigning on these issues both in this House and, for many years, in civil society. She made a typically powerful and well-evidenced speech, as did all the other contributors from whom we have heard. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms) for all his work with the Work and Pensions Committee, based on his extensive knowledge in this area, and to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), as always, for his characteristically thoughtful, detailed and humble remarks.

I also take this opportunity to thank the many organisations, charities and activists campaigning to improve the lives of disabled people. Next Saturday we will be marking the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, which, like my right hon. and hon. Friends, I will henceforth refer to as the International Day of Disabled People because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea said, we subscribe to the social model of disability not the medical model.

I wish I could say that we are all here purely to celebrate the International Day of Disabled People. There is certainly a huge amount to celebrate, and many Members have rightly referred to the truly inspiring case of John McFall and this week’s wonderful news about him potentially becoming the first disabled astronaut. There are so many others we could mention, not least on the “Disability Power 100” list, which my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea mentioned. The fifth of Britain’s population who have a disability are obviously achieving incredible things.

I associate myself with the gratitude that my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea expressed for the lives of Seán McGovern and Roger Lewis. Seán was a Unite member and trade unionist, and I thank both of them for all they achieved. I express our sympathies to their family and friends on their loss.

There is clearly no lack of ambition among disabled people but, sadly, they are far too often blocked from realising those ambitions, and therefore we must not shy away from the challenges they face, which have become increasingly intense over recent years. Even before the pandemic, public service and social security cuts since 2010 fell disproportionately on the shoulders of disabled people.

Since then, disturbingly, disabled people made up three in five of those who died from covid-19 in England during the first wave of the pandemic. Successive failures in social care and social security have left disabled people more vulnerable to the health and economic consequences of the virus. As my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea rightly said, so many challenges for disabled people are connected to those areas and others. She mentioned the challenges around transport and the lack of social care reform, which disabled people have been promised so many times. The hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) also talked about the impact of cuts to international aid on disabled people internationally.

One area that all speakers rightly mentioned is disabled people’s participation in the labour market. I am concerned by the recent figures showing that in 2021 the proportion of disabled people either unemployed or economically inactive rose from 45.9% to 47.7%. Four million disabled people are now locked out of work, and the disability employment gap has recently grown—marginally, but it is growing—from 28.1% to 28.8%. That is unacceptable. We need to see much more action to support disabled people into work and in work.

Of course, we also need to see much more action on the cost of living crisis, which is impacting disabled people’s livelihoods. Their ability to eat decently, to heat their homes, to work and even just to access basic medication and equipment is often in peril. The charity Scope estimates that the additional cost of being disabled amounts, on average, to around £600 a month, and those calculations were undertaken before the intensified price rises for goods and services in recent weeks.

All of this has real-life consequences for disabled people. Last month, the Office for National Statistics found that over half of disabled adults—55%—report finding it difficult to afford their energy bills. As the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw rightly said, not being able to power the equipment they need can have a direct impact on people’s health. That compares with a lower proportion of non-disabled people, 40%, who are finding it difficult to afford their bills. Over a third of disabled people—36%—find it difficult to afford their rent or mortgage payments, compared with 27% of non-disabled people.

The response to all this has been to publish the extremely delayed national strategy for disabled people. As others have said, the strategy was ruled unlawful by the High Court because disabled people were not consulted on what they need. The strategy was about disabled people, without disabled people. As my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham rightly made clear, such engagement is important not only in showing respect to disabled people, rather than the palpable disrespect that the Government were found to have shown, but in ensuring that policies for disabled people will actually work and be effective.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft), the shadow Minister for Disabled People, for all the work she has done to make sure disabled people’s voices are heard. I associate myself with the remarks of the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw concerning the Government’s approach to the Human Rights Act, which looks set to remove some of the levers for disabled people.

Another topic mentioned in this debate is the incidence of hate crime directed towards disabled people. We are still waiting for a new hate crime strategy, despite disability-related hate crime increasing more than sevenfold in recent years. What is the Minister doing to replace the national disability strategy and properly consult disabled people? How will he close the employment and wage gaps for disabled people? Will he commit to tackling hate crime perpetrated against disabled people? And what is he doing to shield disabled people from the economic crisis that is worse in our country than in many comparable countries, partly because of decisions made by successive recent Governments?

We need a different approach. The last Labour Government did more to advance equality than any other Government, and the next Labour Government will build on that track record. We will work with disabled people, in a spirit of dignity and respect, to develop the right policies for and with disabled people. That includes, for example, introducing flexible working by default. We will move ahead speedily with disability pay gap reporting in the first 100 days of a new Labour Government.

We need to do that because this year’s disability pay gap shows that disabled workers earn £2.05 less per hour than non-disabled workers. Disability pay gap reporting will shine a light on this inequity and encourage employers to act to rectify it. We will level the playing field for disabled people, to ensure that the horrendous hate crimes against them are treated as the aggravated offences they are.

It is also critical that we consider the situation for different groups of disabled people. Last Sunday was Equal Pay Day, when women essentially stopped earning for the year, compared with men, as a result of the gender pay gap. As my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea said, gender exacerbates the disability pay gap. The pay gap for disabled women is disturbingly high, with the latest statistics suggesting it stands at a whopping 22.1%. Their Equal Pay Day was way back on 12 October, which is when they stopped earning relative to all men. Nobody should face unfair and unequal pay at work, but this shows how disabled people are even more disadvantaged. I associate myself with the remarks of my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham. Transparency, both in the workplace and from Government, is surely the very least that disabled people should expect.

Tomorrow is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women and Girls, marking the start of 16 days of activism against such violence. Disabled people experience domestic abuse at double the rate of non-disabled people. During their lifetime, one in two disabled women in the UK experiences domestic violence, compared with one in four women overall. Disabled women also experience higher rates of economic abuse and of having treatment or equipment withheld.

In the month of Equal Pay Day, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women and Girls and the International Day of Disabled People, what will the Minister do to end violence against women, girls and disabled women, and to close the pay gaps that affect them? Will the Government treat disabled people with dignity and respect? Will they fulfil their promises on flexible working to make it easier for disabled people to get to work? And will they finally bring forward a strategy for disabled people that actually consults and involves them? I look forward to his response.

Income Tax (Charge)

Anneliese Dodds Excerpts

Thursday 4th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

Yesterday, we saw in black and white the impact of this Government’s mishandling of the coronavirus crisis, right there at the front of the Office for Budget Responsibility’s report: the UK has suffered the worst economic crisis of any major economy. The Chancellor has tried to dismiss that damning fact as a mere accounting quirk, but the OBR was clear: even when all G7 countries are measured in the same way, the UK’s economic crisis has still been the worst.

Perhaps it is understandable why the Chancellor wishes to muddy the waters on this point, because the OBR is scathing in its assessment of the reasons why we have had such a severe crisis, and he has played a leading role. In its words, the primary reason is:

“simply that the UK has experienced higher rates of infection, hospitalisations, and deaths from the virus than other countries.”

The Government were too slow into lockdown not once, but three times. The Labour party urged the Government last autumn to listen to the scientific advice and bring in a short circuit-breaker over half-term to contain the virus, but the Chancellor allegedly overruled the scientists and insisted that a lockdown was not needed. When it came, it was longer and more severe. As the OBR notes:

“The UK has spent longer in stricter lockdowns than other advanced economies”.

The fact is that the Chancellor just does not get it. He thinks that we can separate out the health crisis from the economic crisis and trade one off against the other, but failing to get on top of the public health crisis only makes the impact on jobs and businesses worse. The OBR was clear on that point:

“a greater prevalence of the virus also raises voluntary social distancing which…account for around half of the total decline in economic activity associated with the pandemic.”

It is a damning report card. Coronavirus may have closed large parts of our economy, but this Government crashed it.

Yesterday’s Budget was an opportunity for the Chancellor to make amends, to end the irresponsible decision making that has defined the past year, and to reverse the economic mismanagement that has defined the past 10 years. It should have been a Budget to rebuild the foundations, but it merely papered over the cracks. After the year that we have just had, it should have put the NHS and social care system front and centre, rewarded our key-worker heroes, and set out a plan to strengthen a system too often horribly exposed by the virus. But incredibly, the Chancellor made just a single mention of the NHS and said nothing whatever about social care. Worse still, despite saying that he would be honest with the country about the challenges that we face, he buried a planned cut of £30 billion in resource spending for the Department of Health and Social Care in the fine print of the Red Book.

We know that, when it comes to the pressures on our NHS, this coming year will look different from the last—thank goodness—but it is extraordinary to think that there will be no ongoing costs, either as a result of the pandemic or of the backlog and waiting times that have built up. More than 4.5 million people are currently on the waiting list for treatment—the highest number on record. The Government are burying their heads in the sand, and it will be our NHS staff who feel the pressure from that denial of reality. Those cuts are an appalling reward for workers who have given absolutely everything over the past year to help our country through this crisis. It is hard to think of a greater long-term challenge than that of social care and yet, despite being almost two years on from the Prime Minister saying that he had a plan to fix the crisis in social care once and for all, this Chancellor and this Government had absolutely nothing to say about it.

As for health, so for education: the Government have planned zero additional covid-related spending for schools this coming year. It is extraordinary to believe that there will be no extra costs for our schools as they try to support a generation of schoolchildren who have missed such a chunk of their education.

That sums up this Budget: nothing to say on the biggest issues the country is facing; out of touch with what people are going through right now; and absolutely no plan for what to do next.

Let us take the jobs crisis. The Department for Work and Pensions should be straining every sinew to help get people into work, yet the kickstart programme that the Secretary of State oversees is helping just one in every 100 eligible young people. The restart programme for the long-term unemployed has not even begun and will not be operating at full capacity until this time next year, by which time unemployment is expected to have hit over 2 million. This Budget should have been a moment to get a grip on these failing schemes, to supercharge them so that they were doing everything possible to help those who have lost their jobs, and to give people a genuine jobs promise, as Labour has urged. But what did we get? We got tinkering around the edges with traineeships and apprenticeships, when we know that £330 million of apprenticeship levy funding is still sitting unspent, and a two-year programme to pilot the use of new technologies to help people find work. That is not a plan. That does not come near the scale of the response needed to help the 1.7 million people who were already out of work, or the hundreds of thousands more who risk losing their jobs in the months to come. Can the Secretary of State honestly look me in the eye and say that this amounts to a plan for jobs?

Moreover, where will the new jobs come from? With the hosting of COP26 this year and the eyes of the world upon us, the UK has an enormous opportunity to show how an active Government making smart investments can help us emerge from the economic crisis and meet our net zero ambitions at the same time. Labour has called for £30 billion of investment to be accelerated into the next 18 months to support the creation of 400,000 new green jobs, but, unbelievably, yesterday’s Budget took us backwards. The Government have actually cut half a billion pounds of capital investment from their plans for the coming year, and the green homes grant, the flagship programme of the Chancellor’s summer statement last year, seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth, after more than 75% of its funding was cut and it was found to have been costing jobs.

We needed a plan both to create the jobs of the future and to put in place employment programmes worthy of their name, to help get people into work. We got neither. So instead, the OBR predicts that we are on course to see unemployment rise to 6.5%, with more than 2 million people out of work. What is the Secretary of State choosing to do, just at the moment that the furlough scheme is set to end and joblessness peaks? She is going to cut £20 a week from social security, right when people need it most. She is going to take our out-of-work support back to the lowest level since the 1990s—to cut the lifeline. Is she happy with the Chancellor’s decision to extend the uplift to universal credit by only six months? Does she believe that that is in the best interests of people in this country, both in and out of work, who rely on that money? Is she happy with the decision to give those on working tax credit a lump sum of £500 and then nothing further? I ask, because she has previously said that there were big downsides to a one-off payment, and that previous experience is that,

“a steady sum of money would probably be more beneficial to claimants and customers”.

While we are focusing on the holes that the right hon. Lady’s Government have torn in our safety net, can she explain why her Government have chosen to cut statutory sick pay in real terms next year? It was already at one of the lowest levels in Europe, and her colleague the Health Secretary has already admitted he could not live on it. It has quite clearly acted as a major barrier to people’s self-isolating when required, as the Government tacitly admitted by bringing in a whole new payments system, with its own problems. So why on earth would the Government cut that support back even further in the middle of a pandemic?

Sadly, that is of a piece with the Government’s failure to understand what so many people are going through right now. The cut to universal credit that looms in six months’ time is just one part of a triple hammer blow that the Government are hitting families with this year. They have also frozen the pay of our key workers for everyone earning above £18,000—a real-terms pay cut—and they are forcing councils across the country to hike council tax by up to 5%.

The Labour party is clear on this: this Budget was not the time for tax rises. That view is shared by a range of economic experts, from the International Monetary Fund and the OECD internationally, to the CBI here in the UK. A triple hammer blow of tax rises and pay freezes now and a social security cut later in the year is not only incredibly unfair on families who have gone through so much, but economically illiterate. It means that those families will be forced to tighten their belts, to spend less in small businesses and on their high streets, and the recovery will take longer. Of course, that has all taken place while we have seen waste and mismanagement from the Government on an industrial scale—from £22 billion on a test and trace system that has not worked for months, to procurement rules being suspended, and those who have political connections being 10 times more likely to win contracts than those who have not.

Despite that profligacy for some, there is the prospect of further pain to come for others, with the Chancellor’s decisions yesterday combining with others since the start of the pandemic to mean £14 billion-worth of cuts to planned public service spending starting next year, rising to £16.5 billion after that.

The Chancellor promised “openness” and “honesty” at this Budget. Well, let me ask the Secretary of State for some openness and honesty now. Where are those cuts going to fall? Will they be felt in fewer police officers, fewer further education opportunities for young people, poorer quality social care for the elderly? What action will the Government take to protect people when their income tax personal allowance is frozen next year, especially once the right hon. Lady’s Department has taken away £20 a year from social security, when many of those in the public sector will have seen their pay frozen, when many other people’s wages are continuing to stagnate, and when council tax has, of course, increased? Will her Government be ready to look at this issue again in the next Budget if required? Why are her Government scheduling the freezing of the personal allowance to take place before increases in corporation tax?

People have a right to know what is waiting over the horizon, because it looks an awful lot like what has come before. It looks an awful lot like a return to a failed economic model that saw us end up with 3.6 million people in insecure work, 4 million children living in poverty, and one in four families with less than £100 in savings. That economic model failed even by its own measures. Severe and repeated cuts to our public services did not result in the Government meeting a single one of their legally binding fiscal targets. They did not stop national debt rising and nearly doubling before the pandemic hit.

We cannot go back to that broken model, with its crumbling foundations. The British people will not accept it. That is why the Budget should have been a moment to lay the foundations for the long term, with a relentless focus on supporting new jobs across the entire UK, supporting our high streets to thrive, protecting family finances, and backing our key worker heroes, but here the Government were singularly lacking in ambition. Labour had called on the Government to support the creation of 100,000 new businesses over the next five years, to harness the UK’s entrepreneurial spirit and set us on the path for growth. Instead, we got a so-called super allowance for investment.

We all want to see more investment in this country, not least because the Conservatives took us into this crisis with the lowest level in the whole of the G7, but the fact is that the new allowance is just the necessary consequence of the Conservative party finally acknowledging that its 10-year experiment with slashing corporation tax until we were an international outlier has failed. Two years ago, the Prime Minister said that

“every time corporation tax has been cut in this country it has produced more revenue”.

Yesterday’s Red Book told a more accurate story, predicting that the new rate would bring in £17.2 billion a year by the end of the forecast period. That is a damning indictment of a core tenet of Conservative economic policy making for the last 10 years. The fact is that by moving the rate back up in two years’ time, aligning us with our international peers, as Labour has long called for, the Chancellor has created a cliff edge that might otherwise have prompted firms to delay investment and further damage the recovery. Action to incentivise and protect investment right now is essential; it is not innovative.

The Chancellor’s grand plan for our future recovery had two further planks, of course: the levelling-up fund and freeports. On the first, we have once again seen the Government’s true colours. They have ridden roughshod over the principle of devolution by taking away control from Wales and Scotland to determine how money can best be spent in their nations, and devised a rating system that miraculously sees the Chancellor’s own constituency, and that of the Communities Secretary, placed at the front of the queue for funding. What people right across this country need is investment in their communities, based on local need, guaranteeing local opportunities and jobs and involving local businesses in the supply chain—not largesse handed out at the whim of Conservative Ministers in Whitehall.

Eight freeports do not add up to a grand plan for our economic future. They are not the silver bullet that the Chancellor would like them to be. There is a strong chance that they do not create new economic activity overall, but instead just move it around, which might be good news for those within a freeport area, but could be bad news for those who live nearby and see local economic activity drain away, and with it jobs and opportunities. We risk more regional economic inequality, which has already risen after 10 years of Conservative Government. On the subject of inequality, yet again the Government failed to provide an equality impact assessment alongside the Budget.

The British people deserve better than this. They deserved a Budget to put our country on the road to recovery; a Budget to rebuild the foundations of our economy; a Budget with the NHS and social care at its heart; a Budget that protected the finances of families across the country who have sacrificed so much over the last 12 months; and a Budget with a relentless focus on jobs, getting people back into work and supporting the jobs of the future—not a Budget from a Chancellor without a plan who has learned nothing from the last year, nor the last decade, and who did nothing more than paper over the cracks, with nothing more to offer than the same tired policies that have led to us suffering the worst economic crisis of any major economy.

Universal Credit and Working Tax Credit

Anneliese Dodds Excerpts

Monday 18th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op) [V]]

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker.

With our country still locked down after record redundancies and with even more anticipated, it is astonishing that the Government are still threatening family finances. Ministers could have come to this House and promised that there would be no cut to universal credit in April. They could have recognised the incredible hardship that families have faced in the last 10 months and are likely to face as we continue in the throes of this crisis. We heard the voices of many of those families today in speeches from my hon. Friends the Members for Ealing North (James Murray), for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle), for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley), for Bradford East (Imran Hussain) and for Belfast South (Claire Hanna).

The cut to universal credit is just one part of a triple hammer blow on families across the country, when coupled with the council tax rise of 5% and the pay freeze for many key workers. While today we have rightly been focused on the immediate threat to the incomes of 6 million families, we should not forget that those on legacy benefits, including the 1.9 million people claiming either form of employment and support allowance and the 300,000 people claiming either form of jobseeker’s allowance, of course have not received an uplift. Those payments must be uprated in line with those for universal credit.

Those on the Government Benches opposed support for families against support for jobseekers, but their choice to cut universal credit is a political one. The past year has seen the Government spend £22 billion on an outsourced test and trace system that still is not delivering. A quarter of that cost has been estimated as the cost for a continuation for a whole year of the support for families that we are debating today. This comes from a Government who have spent monumental amounts wastefully on goods and services that simply have not worked: £150 million on face masks that could not be used; £16 million on antibody tests that did not work; and £12 million on an app that had to be scrapped. The list goes on and on, as intimated by my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Sam Tarry).

Instead of tackling waste and mismanagement, our Government are targeting families, with the worst-off fifth of households in our country facing what the Resolution Foundation has described as an “almost unimaginable” 7% hit to their disposable incomes if the Government continue on this path. Cutting £20 a week from universal credit is a political choice to make ordinary families carry the can for this Government’s mistakes, as my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Gerald Jones) rightly put it.

There are rumours that the Chancellor is considering a one-off payment of either £500 or £1,000 instead of maintaining the £20 per week uplift. If those payments take place at the beginning of April, people would miss out if they were affected by the end of the furlough scheme in April, so if someone loses their job on 30 March, they would get £1,000 more to see them through than if they lose their job just a month later. There can be no economic justification for this approach. Furthermore, at times during this pandemic we have had 200,000 new claimants coming on to this system in a single month. A one-off payment simply will not work.

I want to make it clear that I and the Opposition have no truck with those who abuse Government Members for their opinions or threaten them. We wholeheartedly condemn that behaviour and it has no place in our democracy, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) made crystal clear.

The Prime Minister’s spokesperson described our debate as a “political stunt”, and other Members on the Government Benches echoed him. However, when the Conservative party was in opposition, it did not consider debates such as these as stunts, and nor did the then Labour Government. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), in one of many exceptional speeches today, put his finger on the problem: the Government have lost the capacity to listen. They need to ask themselves why a number of their own Members, from the right hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb) to the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (Simon Fell), called again today for the Government to look at the issue and to retain the uplift during this crisis.

The Resolution Foundation has shown how the cut, combined with rising unemployment, would lead to the biggest year-on-year rise in poverty rates since the 1980s, and to a rise in absolute, as well as relative, poverty. My hon. Friends the Members for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) and for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) rightly highlighted the impact of that on child poverty in particular. The cut is morally untenable, but it is also economically nonsensical. What the UK needs as we come out of this crisis is confidence—confidence that the Government have got a grip on public health, but also confidence that people can afford to spend, to go out on to our high streets and into our small businesses. This cut shatters the confidence of those who are far more likely to spend than those who are better off. The cut also ignores the high long-term costs of poverty, as underlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern). As my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham highlighted, this is a false economy.

Finally, I regret that I have to mention this, but yet again we saw Conservative Members pitting universal credit claimants against working people. Universal credit is an in-work benefit. It does not take money from everybody else who works, as the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) suggested, and it should not be pitted against getting Britain back to work, as the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and the hon. Members for Derbyshire Dales (Miss Dines) and for Stourbridge (Suzanne Webb) maintained. My hon. Friends the Members for Edmonton (Kate Osamor) and for Easington (Grahame Morris) were absolutely right to point to the impact on claimants of such false comparisons.

The proposed cuts will disproportionately impact those in the north of England and in Wales. It is bad enough that one in five non-pensioner households in the south-east will be hit by these cuts, but in the north-east, Yorkshire and the Humber, Wales and the west midlands it will be more than one in three households. The Chancellor might want to learn the lessons of his predecessor. George Osborne also thought he could cut an average of £1,000 a year from families’ incomes. It took just over a month for him to see the error of his ways and back down. Mr Osborne’s cuts would have affected 3.3 million working families. The current Chancellor plans to take a hammer blow to nearly double that number—6 million families—across the country. Month after month, he has stubbornly ploughed ahead, ignoring the economic evidence, even ignoring two former Conservative Secretaries of State for Work and Pensions.

The Minister stated in opening that the Secretary of State was in active discussions with the Treasury. On the Labour side, our DWP and Treasury teams have already had those active discussions. We decided to prioritise families and our economic recovery, and we are doing something about it today. For all the talk of wanting to address inequality in this country, here is a policy choice from the Conservatives that would see one in four people—and one in three children—in relative poverty by the end of this Parliament. Instead, our Government should be focused on securing our economy, protecting our NHS and rebuilding Britain. Cutting a financial lifeline for 6 million people will not secure our economy. Enacting a policy that will plunge families into hardship, widen regional inequalities and make working people carry the can for the Government’s mistakes is no way to rebuild Britain. It is not too late for Government Members to do the right thing. I urge them to vote with us today and send a clear message to millions of families that their elected representatives hear them and are on their side.

Social Security

Anneliese Dodds Excerpts

Monday 10th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mike Amesbury]

My hon. Friend makes a very valid and powerful point.

For too many of our citizens, there is no such security. The responsibility for this situation lies firmly at the door of the Government, whose lack of compassion and cruel social security policies have afflicted those who are most in need.

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that many of the cuts have been self-defeating, and current decisions are self-defeating as well? Research by Alma Economics shows that if the Government decided to restore the local housing allowance rates for the cheapest 30% of rents, that would save local authorities, the health system and many others billions of pounds in the long run. Surely the Government need to look at that.

[Mike Amesbury]

I agree with my hon. Friend, and I will come on to that later in my speech.

Local Housing Allowance and Homelessness

Anneliese Dodds Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making a very good speech. Although the problem may be most acute in London and the south-east, it applies right across the UK, as he points out. In my constituency there is not a single four-bed, three-bed or two-bed property that fits within the LHA, and the only one-beds are caravans or the odd sheltered housing flat. It applies everywhere.

[Dr Drew]

I agree. My hon. Friend’s example shows, in a nutshell, what it is like out there. It is not only that housing is not available, but that the limited amount available is of such poor quality that families in a desperate state are being forced into even greater poverty. They then almost certainly have to top up.

The figures in the Gloucester-Stroud area show a shortfall of £27.24 for a single room, which rises to £112.46 for a four-bed property—if there even are any, which I suspect there are not. I make a heartfelt plea to the Minister that this cannot go on. Such is the difficulty we face with the dislocation in the housing market. We have to accept that private renting is there for people who do not stand a chance of getting a council property or any other form of social housing, because they are so far down the band system as a result of whatever may have happened in their past, their inability to pay the rent or their not being local to the area. They end up renting in the private sector; they get penalised because they cannot find anything; if they do find something it is poor—and then they have to top up.

Please, Minister, can we look at this as a crisis and start doing something about it?

--- Later in debate ---

[Will Quince]

The right hon. Gentleman refers to rough sleeping. Often people lump homelessness and rough sleeping together, but there is a huge difference between them. The Government are taking considerable action on rough sleeping. I will happily meet him, or arrange for the Housing and Homelessness Minister to do so, in order to discuss it in more detail. I know that he cares hugely about this issue, and contributes to debates on it. I share his passion. The Government are taking significant action, but he is right that we must look at LHA rates. I hope I made it clear at the outset that I am doing that with the Secretary of State, and ahead of the next fiscal event we are looking very closely at what more we can do.

Between 2000 and 2010, housing benefit expenditure rose by more than half in real terms, reaching £25 billion in today’s prices. Left unreformed, by 2014-15 housing benefit would have reached £29 billion. That was clearly not sustainable. The measure to freeze local housing allowance rates for four years from April 2016 built on reforms introduced in the previous Parliament, which saved £6 billion in total by 2015-16. Savings from freezing LHA are estimated to be around £655 million for Great Britain over the four-year period of the measure. Our reforms are part of our wider goal to move people from welfare and into work.

We recognise that some places have seen higher increases in rents than others, and have made provision to help people further in those areas, as the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) mentioned. We have used a proportion of the savings from the freeze to reduce the gap between frozen LHA rates and the 30th percentile reference rent in the areas of greatest rental growth. Initially, 30% of the savings from the freeze were used for targeted affordability funding, but we invested an additional £125 million in that funding for the final two years of the freeze. That was based on 50% of the savings rather than 30%.

[Anneliese Dodds]

Has the Department conducted any kind of cost-benefit analysis of the measure’s overall impact? In practice, it is leading to additional health and education costs, and to huge impacts on families that have to be sucked up by already strapped local authorities. Has there been any kind of 360° review of the measure’s overall impact across Government, including local government, and not just on the benefits bill?

[Will Quince]

I have been a Minister for only three months and I keep all the policies in my remit at the Department under very close review. I regularly meet and have conversations with key stakeholders in policy areas such as this, to ensure that we are aware where policies are and are not working, and that we are alive to the issues. It will not come as a surprise to the hon. Lady that stakeholders in this area have flagged LHA rates as an issue. That is why we are looking at it very closely indeed.

The additional funding enabled us to increase 213 LHA rates—there are 960 rates in total—by 3% last year. This year, a total of £210 million has been made available: the highest amount of targeted affordability funding since its introduction in 2014. That has enabled us to increase 361 LHA rates by 3%. As a result, it is estimated that 500,000 households this year will benefit from an increase of around £250 a year.

In addition to that targeted affordability funding, the Government have provided more than £1 billion in discretionary housing payments to local authorities since 2011, which the hon. Member for Westminster North referred to. Discretionary housing payments allow local authorities to protect the most vulnerable claimants and support households affected by different welfare reforms, including the freeze to the LHA.

The Secretary of State’s Handling of Universal Credit

Anneliese Dodds Excerpts

Wednesday 11th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Margaret Greenwood]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Thirdly, the Secretary of State claimed that universal credit is working. The head of the NAO said in his letter that this is unproven. The DWP’s own survey of claimants under the full service published in June shows that just under half of all claimants were unable to register their claim online unassisted, a quarter were not able to submit their claim online at all and 40% were falling behind with bills or experiencing real financial difficulties, sometimes even nine months into their claim. A recent freedom of information request revealed that a fifth of universal credit claims are failing at an early stage because claimants are not able to navigate the online system. These people are likely to be among the most vulnerable in our society, and this Government are failing them.

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Precisely on that point—which I have raised repeatedly with Ministers, but to no avail—does she accept that the Government’s position of not allowing advice agencies to help people with their claims after they changed the implied consent rules is shown to be completely bankrupt when such a high proportion of people cannot get their claims sorted out online?

[Margaret Greenwood]

My hon. Friend makes an important point.

Supported Housing

Anneliese Dodds Excerpts

Wednesday 25th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

I will endeavour to be brief. First, let me thank my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) and the Select Committee members for all their work on this issue.

It was a qualified relief to hear earlier that the Government have, to some extent, listened to sense and will not be going ahead with their original plans to restrict the funding for supported housing to LHA rates only. Many have already talked about the impacts that the original changes would have had on their constituencies. Certainly I calculated that, within Oxford East, we would have seen around a third of supported housing provision wiped out because the LHA rates are around a third below the average private rental cost. That would obviously have had a very negative impact on my constituency.

One point that has not come up so far is the need for any future funding solution to be ring-fenced. There was a difficult situation with another relevant funding stream, Supporting People funding. Some hon. Members have touched on that, although they did not name it per se. Supporting People funding was devolved to an extent, but it was not ring-fenced. Many local authority areas, including my area of Oxford, which is covered by Oxfordshire County Council, have faced the removal of all support for facilities such as homeless shelters. That has resulted in a reduction of about half of all shelter places—that is an accurate headcount—for homeless people in places such as Oxford in a time of record levels of rough sleeping.

We need to ensure that any future funding system is locally responsive, potentially reflecting regional costs, as many have advocated and as the Joint Select Committee report suggested. But we should also ensure that the funding is ring-fenced, because we really do not want it to leach away into other areas when local authorities are under such enormous pressure owing to cuts from central Government.

Many speakers have said that there is no relationship between the local housing allowance and the cost of supported housing. Of course that is the case, but it is also the case that in many areas the LHA bears very little relation to private rented costs per se. In my city of Oxford there are no—none, zero—family homes that are affordable under the current LHA. Home rental websites show that there is not a single one. I hope that the Government’s reflection, albeit a rather tardy one, on supported housing will lead them to think more carefully about the nature of calculation of the LHA for all rented accommodation.

Universal Credit Roll-out

Anneliese Dodds Excerpts

Tuesday 24th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)]

This Standing Order No. 24 debate follows last week’s Opposition day debate on universal credit—a debate in which I also spoke, and one in which we heard a number of contributions from both sides of the House offering contrasting views. That debate provided an opportunity for Members on both sides to come to the Chamber and contribute, and they did so. The Opposition motion was debated and heard, and the Minister responded. I know that today’s motion is on the pausing of the full-service roll-out of universal credit, but I am left a little confused about where we are with this. Are we wanting to pause and fix? Are we wanting to pause? Or is it simply a case of the Opposition wanting to stop this really transformational piece of legislation, full stop?

My hon. and learned Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer) hit the nail on the head earlier. Welfare matters, especially when someone relies on it, but improving the system matters, too. We have to ensure that work always pays, so that things are better and fairer for those who need it and for those who pay for it. The old system simply was not working. It was bizarre that it was not worth working more than 16 hours a week. There was no real incentive to work. The system needed change. Evidence shows that universal credit is helping people into work faster and is helping them to stay in work longer.

I do not want to repeat everything I said last week or what was said in many of the contributions today—that is on the record and I do not have much time—but I just want to touch on the issue of pausing, because the Opposition’s intention is not to pause the roll-out but to stop it. Universal credit has the potential to change people’s lives. To stop a benefit that prepares people for work and helps them get on in work would be wrong. This nine-year programme is designed to enable a gradual move towards universal credit. It is worth remembering that coverage is currently at 8%. Over the next four months, the roll-out will increase coverage from 8% to 10%—just two percentage points by my reckoning. [Interruption.] I am coming to a close now, Mr Speaker; I can sense you speeding me along.

Universal credit is a response to the overcomplicated system that we inherited from the previous Labour Government. Despite what the Opposition say, recent data show that universal credit is transforming the prospects of those who use it. It is important to continue with the programme, and my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) gave us some helpful insight into his constituency, where, yes, there are challenges, but there are positive stories, too.

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

rose—

[Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

I apologise to the House for missing the start of the debate; I had to be at a sitting of the Finance Bill Committee. Colleagues have obviously already detailed many problems with universal credit, so I just want to focus on two: informed consent and data sharing. I mentioned them in last week’s debate, but the Minister was sadly unable to respond because he ran out of time. I have since written to him and to the Secretary of State, and I hope that he will be able to respond formally at the end of this debate with what he is going to do on both.

On informed consent, Members will recall the words of the Secretary of State from last week’s debate, when he said:

“Very often the CAB needs to call the local jobcentre rather than the national centre, because if it wants to deal with an individual case, dealing with the jobcentre would be more helpful.”—[Official Report, 18 October 2017; Vol. 629, c. 873.]

The point is that advice centres cannot directly speak to the jobcentre or to the DWP, because the rules have been changed under universal credit so that advice centres no longer have implied consent. The only individuals who have it now are Members of Parliament. Who is better to deal with a constituent with a head injury, for example, who is trying to work out what their universal credit allocation should be: me, an MP who knows little about it, or a specialist organisation such as Headway? Headway used to be able to provide advice on such issues, but it is no longer allowed to, owing to the new rules on implied consent.

I will provide a quick example from an advice centre, which I have sent to the Minister:

“Our clients are in and out of hospital and often taking heavy duty pain relief drugs. Access to computers and remembering the login details is often impossible.”

I will not provide the rest of the details, but I want to finish with this quote:

“Monitoring whether my clients have been properly paid through universal credit is a nightmare.”

The Minister can end that nightmare immediately today by extending implied consent to advice agencies, just as applied previously. It would be simple to do and would make an enormous difference to some vulnerable people.

On data sharing, there was some discussion last week about the scope and efficacy of the new landlord portal, which is intended to enable data sharing between landlords and the DWP. The DWP clearly accepts the need to share some data, but it is refusing to share data with local authorities. I do not know whether the Minister is ready for this in his constituency, but I have been informed that about 4,000 households in my constituency will have to take screenshots of their DWP entitlement—if they have a computer; many do not—and then email or take it to the local authority so that it can work out whether they are due council tax benefit, all because the DWP will no longer share that data with local authorities. The system could be changed easily, so I ask the Minister to wave his magic wand and change it.

Universal Credit Roll-out

Anneliese Dodds Excerpts

Wednesday 18th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

Universal credit is being rolled out in my constituency today. I used to chair a debt and welfare advice centre on my estate of Rose Hill. On that council estate, 50% of children are growing up in families living in poverty. Guess what? Many of those families are in work, so in-work poverty does exist in this country.

I have a strong interest in this issue, but little time to talk about it, so I will focus on two areas where the Government could, if they listened, change things right now. It would cost nothing and massively improve the situation facing many claimants.

First, around implied consent, I will talk directly to the Secretary of State now, if he does not mind, because he seemed to suggest earlier that he thought that advice agencies would be able go to the local jobcentre on behalf of their clients to help them when making a claim. Actually, that is not the case, because the rules around implied consent have been changed with universal credit. Following the intervention by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field), only MPs are deemed to have implied consent from the people they are representing if there is a problem with universal credit, not advice agencies. We do not often have a magic wand, but will the Secretary of State please wave his magic wand—tonight—and say that he is going to change that? Advice agencies, as he seems already to believe, need that implied consent to represent the people they are trying to help and to be able to get through to the DWP to assist those who are struggling with their universal credit applications. He can do that and he can do it now. Please will he do it?

Secondly, we have heard already about how there will be a landlord portal and, allegedly, information sharing with landlords. Why is there no information sharing with local authorities? They have been banned from getting that information about the composition of universal credit, so they cannot work out who needs to get council tax benefit or which families will be classified for the pupil premium. Again, why does the Secretary of State not just wave that magic wand and say he will enable local authorities to be trusted partners? He can do it tonight. Please do it tonight. Two changes—say that you are going to put them in place.