Covid-19: Department for Work and Pensions Update

Baroness Meacher Excerpts

Tuesday 5th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook]

I thank the noble Baroness very much. I know that this issue is dear to her heart. However, in line with government guidance, face-to-face hearings obviously had to be stopped. First-tier Tribunals —ones for social security and child support issues—have been replaced with telephone hearings and the use of other remote hearing technologies. As many of those hearings as possible have to be held remotely. All parties in the hearings are being contacted directly to confirm how they can be part of that tribunal. We are also working very closely with our colleagues in HMCTS, who continue to undertake paper-based and telephone hearings. The DWP continues to join these when directed to do so. What is important is that we are working with HMCTS to test video hearings, because that would be a great way forward.

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for the Statement and for the short-term loosening of the sanctions regime.

Covid-19 is not a three-month problem. As the UK comes out of the pandemic over the next year—if it does—we will find ourselves with many broken sectors in the economy and millions of unemployed workers. One of the most serious consequences of the pandemic—there will be many—will be the re-emergence of high levels of long-term unemployment, last seen in the 1980s. In view of this grim reality, will the Minister ask her colleagues for a full-scale review of the sanctions regime upon which universal credit is based? Minor adjustments here and there will not make a significant difference: we need active labour market policies. In the 1980s, unemployed young people who were out of work for six months or more were offered work in the public or charity sectors and paid the rate for the job, probably something like the minimum wage. Importantly, they did not lose their capacity to work, their confidence or their mental health. Idleness destroys us all. Yes, it would cost money, but the benefits would outweigh the costs by a very big margin. I ask the Minister for her response to this proposal.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook]

The department is keeping all welfare changes under continual review. Not only that, it is already working on forward planning for when the economy first starts to increase again. As the noble Baroness says, there may be more unemployment. We are therefore working on how we can deal with that and support people back into work, although it may not be the same work. All that work is being done in the department at the moment.