Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Welfare Reform (Disabled People)

Ben Gummer Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I will take one more intervention from my hon. Friend, before setting out some positive policies.

[Ben Gummer (Ipswich) (Con)]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s comments about discretionary housing payments, because I have had precisely that problem with one constituent who has a long-term condition. He was given an award, which the local Labour-controlled borough council keeps on coming back to him to reaffirm, even though it is within its power to give him a long-standing award. However, it does not do so purely for political reasons.

[Mr Harper]

I have listened to what my hon. Friend has said. The guidance is quite clear that if authorities think it appropriate, they are able to make a long-term award. As I said, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has set out that the funding is available, not just this year but next year, so that they can have the financial confidence to do so. I leave it to others to make a judgment about why authorities might be doing what my hon. Friend says.

Despite the fact that Labour’s motion, in the name of the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston, contains not a single positive point about how we could improve the lives of disabled people, let me set out some positive suggestions, which Members can think about as they reject the motion before us. In 2012-13, this Government spent nearly £50 billion on disability benefits and services. Overall spending on benefits will be higher in every year through to 2017-18 than in the 2009-10 financial year, so we are absolutely committed to providing the proper support to disabled people. However, we also want disabled people, where they can, to move into work, to stay in work and to progress in the labour market.

Of course, the value of work is not just financial, which is one of the points to come out in the debate provoked by my noble Friend’s remarks. One of my hon. Friends pointed out earlier that disability employment had increased by 116,000 in the last year alone, which is very welcome, but there is more to do. The hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston mentioned the disability employment gap. It is worth saying that the percentage of disabled people in employment in Britain is about the EU average. Our gap is higher, but of course that reflects our better performance at getting people into work overall. The gap has remained stable during the recession, but it is still too high. We want to narrow the gap through the range of programmes we have to support disabled people into work.

Let me say a little about some of those programmes, which include Access to Work. Members of the Work and Pensions Committee will know that on Wednesday I am giving evidence about Access to Work, not only on some of the areas where there have been administrative issues, which we are fixing, but on some of the changes that I hope we can make in the months to come. We said in 2012 that we would invest a further £15 million in the scheme, which we have. In 2013-14, more than 35,000 people were helped by Access to Work, which was 5,000 more than in the year before. It is a valuable scheme; I want to try to make it less bureaucratic and more successful.

The Work programme, which has already been mentioned, is designed to help people at risk of becoming long-term unemployed. Of course, employment and support allowance claimants are required only to prepare for work, rather than having any more conditionality, but providers have developed innovative approaches to support those with significant barriers to work, and one in 10 of the more recent ESA new claimants has had at least three months of work in the first year of the programme. Work Choice supports disabled people with more severe disabilities, with support tailored to individual needs. In 2013-14, more than 20,000 people started on Work Choice, with more than half achieving a sustainable job outcome.

Let me say a little more about mental health conditions and the conditions people have that prove a barrier to getting into work. I do not pretend that we have by any means solved the problems for those with physical health conditions—there is more to do—but the biggest gap is for those with mental health conditions, just under half of whom are in work. The figure for those with learning disabilities is around a quarter, while for those with some other hidden impairments, such as autism, it is only 15%.

This Government are doing a great deal on improving the performance on mental health. I have set out some of the things that my noble Friend Lord Freud has brought forward, but we have also made significant announcements about our mental health policies. The Deputy Prime Minister has set out a number of changes, which will come into force from next April, on the national health service’s performance on making talking therapies available more quickly. He has also set out the pilots that will be run to improve waiting time standards. This Government are stepping up the action we are taking on mental health that will enable people with mental health conditions to get into work.

Finally, on our employment programmes, I want to mention the Disability Confident campaign, which, as Members will know, the Prime Minister launched last year. It is about giving employers the confidence to employ disabled people. My hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham), who is no longer in his place, referred to the event he is holding on 15 November—which I will be very pleased to attend—to promote employers in the Gloucestershire area hiring more disabled people. Such events are going on all over the country—the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston said she would be holding one. I have written to every Member of the House and would urge everyone to hold an event to demonstrate practically to employers that if they wish to hire disabled people, the help and support is there to ensure that they can do so.

In conclusion, this debate is cynically motivated. It is not about what Lord Freud said. The Labour party knows that he is a man who cares passionately about getting disabled people into work. The right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), who was Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform in the last Government, worked with him and knows that to be the case. He inspired—in the words of the then Secretary of State—their welfare reforms. Everyone has seen through this debate, which is about trying to draw attention away from the success of our long-term economic plan and the creation of 2 million jobs. I have set out some of the Government’s positive policies to ensure that disabled people can live independent lives and that as many as possible of them can stay in or move into work. I am proud of our record.

I draw a different conclusion from that of the Labour party about these events and how Members have conducted themselves. Labour’s handling of this issue and its lack of a credible economic policy prove that it is not fit to govern this country. I urge the House to concur in that view by rejecting this cynical motion.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ben Gummer (Ipswich) (Con)]

I, too, would like to pay tribute to the new Member, the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes), for a really interesting speech, and a charming and moving description of her constituency. I congratulate her on her success in what I know was a hard-fought campaign. She is one of a number of Members who have come here recently, and will no doubt come here in the next few months, after fighting in by-elections that might prefigure the next election and the difficulties that all hon. Members have with populist politicians who wish to paint this place and many of those who work here as people who do not listen, do not care and are interested only in themselves. I am very glad that she managed to make her case to her electorate, and that they, by a margin narrower than I imagine she would have wished, accepted her argument that, irrespective of the history of the Labour party or of the current travails of its leadership, she was best able to represent the community that she clearly cares very much about.

That goes to the nub of the motion—the word “trust”, on the fourth line, which is what the Opposition are trying to get at. What frustrates me about this debate is that it really is a debate of two parts.

I will leave the opening speech for a moment, because we have heard a number of significant contributions from Members who have far more experience than I have of the difficulties facing people with disability, as well as from Members who have experienced the difficulties of reform of the benefit system, under the previous and current Governments, in which I also have experience, as do others who will no doubt speak in the next few minutes. No one could not be affected by the significant speeches of the right hon. Member for Stirling (Mrs McGuire), or of my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard), who is one of the finest speakers in the House. I am also happy once again to follow a man I admire enormously, the right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr Clarke), who makes powerful points. Something rather like a centrifugal force has imposed itself, because all those Members have returned to the core issue of disability and left aside the motion on the Order Paper. That is because most people in the House really do care passionately about why they are here.

There was a very good speech given at the beginning of the summer, at the Royal Institute of British Architects, which included the following opening statements:

“Our biggest obstacle…is cynicism. The belief that nobody can make a difference. That all politics is the same. Voters believe we value posturing more than principle. Good photos or soundbites more than a decent policy. Image more than ideas. And it is no surprise that people think that. Because so often the terms of trade of politics—the way it is discussed and rated—has become about the manufactured, the polished, the presentational. Politics is played out as showbiz, a game, who is up and who is down. Rather than the best chance a lot of people have to change their lives. And things are judged far more on style than substance. But this political culture, this photo-op politics, denies people a debate about the things that really matter. And that does deep harm to our country. It leaves politics a game that fewer and fewer people are watching, or believing. People’s sense of the artificiality, the triviality, the superficiality of politics is more highly tuned than ever. And the more it seems this is what matters to us, the more the public are put off. Unless we stand up now and say that we want to offer people something different, more and more will simply turn away.”

That was a speech by the Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition called “The Choice”.

We have a choice in this debate, and that is why I am sad, because I really respect the shadow Minister. We have been in Public Bill Committees together, and I too sensed that her heart was not in it. We have a choice to debate issues sensibly and seriously and not to take the easy political route. We have had a great debate in parts today, but it was nothing to do with what is in the motion. I respectfully suggest that the Opposition withdraw the motion rather than put it to a vote.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

We have had a wide-ranging debate with thoughtful contributions from hon. Members on both sides of the House about how best to support disabled people. Lord Freud’s words touched a nerve with disabled people around the country because of their experience in the past few years. They felt that, in those words, there was an explanation of what has happened, such as the bedroom tax and the delays with PIP assessments, which we have heard a lot about in the debate.

In an excellent speech opening the debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) pointed out that half of former Remploy employees are still out of work. A constituent came to see me yesterday morning. He has cerebral palsy. He worked for 25 years at the local Remploy factory, which closed in 2012. He came to see me before the closure because he was worried that he would end up on the scrapheap. Today, he believes that that is exactly where he is. Promises were made about support, but he has had one trial for a call centre job in the two years since the factory closed down, and it came to nothing. The promises that were made have simply not been kept and help has not materialised, and disabled people have been let down.

Earlier this afternoon, I met representatives from the residential training colleges for disabled people and those furthest from the workplace. Between them—there are nine of them—they get hundreds of people into work every year. They have a contract until next August. They have no idea what happens beyond that. They told me that the Minister has repeatedly refused to meet them despite their requests. Once again, disabled people are being left in limbo.

[Ben Gummer]

The hon. Gentleman raised a sad individual case and drew a general conclusion. Does he accept that since 2010 166,000 more disabled people are in work than when we took office?

[Stephen Timms]

As the Minister was right to acknowledge, the employment rate penalty for disabled people is not going down. It was going down in the past; it is no longer going down. Part of the reason for that is what has happened with the Work programme. In respect of people out of work on health grounds—people on employment and support allowance—the invitation to tender for the Work programme said that if there was no programme at all, 15% of them would be expected to get job outcomes within two years. Actual performance, with the Work programme in place, has been worse than half that—an extraordinary failure rate of 93%.

The Minister told us earlier that the Work programme is now doing a bit better and that one in 10 people are getting some help. That still means that 90% are not being helped—an extraordinary failure. [Interruption.] What the Secretary of State is chuntering from the Front Bench is wrong. All the current funding for the Work programme comes from job outcome payments. According to a recent written answer, the Work programme paid out in total £332 million in job outcome payments between June 2011 and March 2014. Only £19 million of that was payments in respect of ESA claimants. Very little has been spent on helping disabled people back to work, so it is not surprising that so few have been helped.

I join other speakers in the debate in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) on her excellent maiden speech. I echo her tribute to her predecessor, Jim Dobbin. I did a little canvassing during her election campaign and spoke to one man who said he would vote for her. He has since written to me to tell me that after that he met my hon. Friend and was delighted that he had made the right decision by voting for her. It was quite a long letter, which I have passed on to her. I know that she will have a very successful tenure as the local Member.

The situation does not need to be as it is at present. The plan that we have set out shows how we can do much better for disabled people than we have been doing. We agree with the independent taskforce on poverty and disability chaired by Sir Bert Massie, and with the think-tank the Institute for Public Policy Research, that we need to take people on ESA, other than those with the very shortest diagnoses, out of the Work programme and set up a new programme for them. We understand why Ministers wanted everybody in the same programme; it clearly has not worked. The Minister cannot pretend that the Work programme has been anything other than a failure for disabled people. We need a different approach. That is the clear lesson from Australia about the advantages of separate disability employment services. The new programme would move away from the outcome-based funding which has clearly not worked.

We also need a much more localised approach. Partly because of those huge regional contracts in the Work programme, it has squeezed out the good local voluntary sector expertise that can do so much to help. We want instead a programme contracted at the city region/local enterprise partnership level, and we want provision to reflect the local labour market. We want local authorities, colleges, employers and, critically, the health service to be around the table. Such integration can be achieved at a city region level. It cannot be achieved, as the Government have shown, from Whitehall.

The Working Well project in Manchester is a good example. It is for people claiming ESA who, after two years on the Work programme, do not have a job—of course, that is the great majority of people on ESA who start on the Work programme. It has been commissioned by the Greater Manchester combined local authorities. The project board is chaired by one of the chief executives and includes Jobcentre Plus, NHS England, the local drug and alcohol team, mental health trusts, colleges and adult education services. Protocols have been drawn up setting up how participants in that programme will be served with health and housing interventions. The funding model is different, with some up-front payments, not just job outcome payments. The contract requires that every client must be seen at least once per fortnight. We need those minimum standards. We have heard a lot from those participating in the Work programme, some of whom have received just an occasional phone call from their provider. We need the NHS to be part of the programme as well. That is the way forward to do a much better job.

We cannot afford to continue wasting the potential of so many disabled people—to continue to tell disabled people by our actions that they are not “worth” it, as the Minister did so shockingly with his words. We need to value disabled people—to enable them to make a contribution, as so many could and, as we have heard in this debate, wish to. The employment gap between disabled people and others is no longer falling. We need to change policies to start bringing it down again. That is worth doing. We need to learn lessons from all the other OECD countries that have a higher employment rate than we do among disabled people. It needs a change of approach; it needs Ministers who respect disabled people; and I am afraid it also needs a change of Government.