Oral Answers to Questions

Bob Russell Excerpts

Monday 3rd November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

I was very struck by the comments of the hon. Lady’s hon. Friend the shadow Education Secretary. According to a recent article:

“Criticising the policies of the last Labour government, Mr Hunt said that the party had previously been too preoccupied with tax credits and not given enough thought to tackling social problems in families.”

We are tackling those social problems through the troubled families initiative and a whole range of initiatives, such as the pupil premium, free school meals and more help with child care for young children. Disadvantaged children will benefit from our measures.

[Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

Assuming that the Department for Work and Pensions supports the armed forces covenant, will the Minister indicate whether the children of any serving personnel might be brought into child poverty as a result of the Ministry of Defence’s decision in recent days, as we approach Remembrance Sunday, to jack up the rents for Army married housing?

[Steve Webb]

I take a close interest in those matters, as vice-chair of the ministerial committee on the armed forces covenant, and know that my hon. Friend has a proud record in speaking for his constituents on these matters. We have sought to benefit the children of serving personnel—for example, with regard to education if they have to move around the country—but I will be happy to raise with colleagues in the Ministry of Defence his concern about the impact of the rent increase and ensure that he receives a written response.

Ford and Visteon UK Ltd

Bob Russell Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)]

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe) not just on securing the debate from the Backbench Business Committee but on how he has led the campaign, which has been supported on both sides of the House, as demonstrated this afternoon. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies), who has also been tireless in pursuing the matter. It is notable that four parties are represented in the House this afternoon. Sometimes MPs put aside their party differences and come together when it is plain that there has been an injustice that needs to be put right. That is certainly the case with the issue we are debating this afternoon.

There is a danger in such a debate that one simply repeats the points that have been made. We have already heard some powerful speeches from both sides of the House, such as that from my constituency neighbour, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns), who represents many of the Essex Visteon pensioners, as I do. As has been pointed out, it is particularly sad that it is necessary to have this debate a second time—I participated in the debate in Westminster Hall—because we all still have great respect and admiration for the Ford Motor Company. It has a proud history in this country and a strong reputation across the world, yet this is a terrible stain on that reputation.

It is perhaps because Ford has previously been seen as such a strong company that it was understandable that its employees, who had given many years of service, should believe the assurances they were given when they told that they were being transferred to the Visteon company and that their pensions could be transferred to a new Visteon pension fund. I will not repeat the quotations given by many hon. Members about how they were told that there would be no detriment and that their pensions would be guaranteed under the same terms and conditions. Of course they believed that, yet today they find that the position is very different.

It is particularly sad when one meets and talks to employees who gave many years of service to Ford that now seem to be ignored and forgotten because for a few years—or even, in some cases, for a few months—they transferred to the Visteon company. In particular, I mention Mr Steve Sharpe, my constituent from Heybridge, who spent 27 years working for the Ford Motor Company and three months working for Visteon, yet has lost 50% of his pension. On any grounds, that is clearly wrong and should be recognised as such by the Ford Motor Company. What makes it worse is that—we have heard reference to this—it appears that Ford knew perfectly well that the Visteon company could not succeed, and indeed took actions after its establishment which made absolutely certain that it was not viable in the long term.

Also, we know that the Visteon pension fund was underfunded right from the start. In the discussions that we have had as part of the all-party group, we have talked to the Pensions Regulator, for instance. It is perhaps a matter of regret that the Pensions Regulator was not in place at the time that this happened. It is perhaps worth speculating that had we had the Pensions Regulator, this situation would not have been allowed to arise. I am grateful to see on the Front Bench the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb), who responded to the previous debate so is familiar with this injustice.

At that time we talked about the way in which the cap on the Pension Protection Fund affected some former employees of Visteon. That is something that the Government have sought to address, but it is still impacting severely on some pensioners of the Visteon company. Perhaps the Minister might touch on that in his response.

As we know, there is a legal case pending, and I of course hear the instruction from the Chair. We do not want to prejudice in any way the legal proceedings that are under way. It should not be necessary because ultimately it is not a question of whether or not Ford acted within or outside the law. It is, as Members in all parts of the House have said, a question of corporate social responsibility. It is a question of the reputational damage that this is doing to Ford across this country and beyond, and it is a question of morality and decency.

[Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

The Minister will have noticed the unity of Essex MPs. Does my hon. Friend agree that the legal skirt behind which Ford is trying to hide is shrinking all the time and the petticoat of morality is now around its ankles?

[Mr Whittingdale]

The hon. Gentleman puts it in his unique style. I think I agree with the message he is giving.

As I say, we will wait to see what happens in the courts, but I hope we do not have to, and that the Ford Motor Company will hear the message being sent from this Chamber this afternoon. My hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend East (James Duddridge) talked about the possibility of a Select Committee hearing. Whether or not we could force the Ford Motor Company to come to this country to a Select Committee is not entirely clear. I have had some experience of forcing people to come before Select Committees, and there is a problem if they are on the other side of the Atlantic. Again, that should not be necessary.

What should be apparent from hearing all the Members who have spoken this afternoon is the overwhelming moral case of the people who gave years of service to the Ford Motor Company and were told that they would be looked after in the future, yet now have suffered real loss due to the fact that they were transferred to the new company, which in a sense was almost bound to fail.

It is just a couple of weeks before Christmas. If the Ford Motor Company wanted to give a Christmas present, it should honour its moral obligations to the Visteon pensioners.

Oral Answers to Questions

Bob Russell Excerpts

Monday 14th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Can we please return to reality? [Interruption.] I love the fact that my new shadow, the hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves)—whom I welcome to her position—was out over the weekend saying “We are going to get really tough on benefits”, and at the first opportunity Labour Members are carping about the cap and the spare room subsidy. The truth is that the cap applies to people with average earnings. May I ask the hon. Gentleman what he might like to say to those who are trying and working hard, and who wonder why people on benefits are earning more than they are?

[Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

8. How many individual cases were raised with the Child Support Agency by hon. Members in 2012.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)]

Out of 1.1 million cases registered with the Child Support Agency, hon. Members raised 7,540 with the agency. That is still too many, but I am pleased to tell my hon. Friend that 12% fewer letters were received in 2012 than in 2011.

[Sir Bob Russell]

I think that that is a bit of an underestimate. The figure is certainly lower than I expected it to be, given that the hon. Member for Colchester has raised more than 1,000 cases in the past 16 years. Does the Minister agree that if a Member of Parliament is having to make representations to the CSA, those cases constitute failures?

[Steve Webb]

I do not have figures showing how many of the 7,000 or so letters came from my hon. Friend, but I suspect that a fair proportion of them did. However, he is right to say that matters should not have to reach the stage at which a Member of Parliament has to raise a case. We are reforming the CSA for that reason, and we believe that the new 2012 system will provide much better customer service.

Oral Answers to Questions

Bob Russell Excerpts

Monday 1st July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Esther McVey]

The right hon. Lady is quite right that Access to Work is key in helping people to remain in work, which is why we have extended it to young children who want to do internships and to new people who want to set up in business. It is working well and we are continuing to expand it, but we must also ensure that it works as best it possibly can. I am proud of what we are doing and we will build on that good platform.

[Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

Thanks to organ transplants, many lives have been saved, but in some cases despite their outward appearance the person is inwardly still disabled. What advice is given to jobcentres and other Government agencies to draw attention to the special needs of those who have had organ transplants?

[Esther McVey]

I am not aware of any specific advice that is given about people with organ transplants, but I do know that our disability employment advisers have in-depth knowledge and help people with all disabilities.

Oral Answers to Questions

Bob Russell Excerpts

Monday 20th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

On the implementation of the cap, people have had over a year to work on this, and I know that local authorities are working with them; we keep in constant contact with them. We will have given local authorities more than £380 million in discretionary moneys. It is very clear that if the issue is only the cap, there is no requirement for people to be evicted. This is a reality, and authorities must work with them. The hon. Gentleman needs to talk to his party, because it wants to make the cap worse by regionalising it.

[Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

15. What steps he is taking to support credit unions.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend, as I always make a point of doing, on his persistence in supporting credit unions. I know that he is a member of his local one, which has about 300 members. I hope that he will welcome the award of a contract for £38 million to the Association of British Credit Unions Limited, which will help 1 million people, and will act as an alternative to loan sharks and payday loans.

[Sir Bob Russell]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that helpful answer. I know that he would like to praise the volunteers at Colchester credit union for all they do. Will he discuss with his ministerial colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Department for Education the importance of encouraging all of us, particularly children, to undertake regular saving?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

My hon. Friend is right and his campaigns have helped us shape some of our thinking on that. It is worth noting that for the first time financial education will be on the national curriculum, which is extremely important. Through universal credit we are making available a series of financial planning devices and special bank accounts, so we hope this will drive people in the right direction. The crackdown on payday lenders who abuse their position has already started and is yielding real results.

Ford UK (Duty of Care to Visteon Pensioners)

Bob Russell Excerpts

Tuesday 4th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Caton. I know that you would probably rather be in the body of the Chamber, since you, too, have many constituents affected by this very sad affair. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer) on his success in securing the debate—a number of us entered the ballot, but he was the one lucky enough to be selected. We have an opportunity for the many Members who represent people who have suffered as a result of what has occurred to speak. As others have done, I would like to single out my hon. Friend the Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe), who has led the campaign so well and ensured that it remains in the public eye. I must first apologise to my hon. Friends and other Members. I have to chair a Select Committee at 10.15 am, so I will be brief. I am grateful to be called early. I will not repeat the facts that were set out so ably by my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green and the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies).

The saga is fairly clear, but it is always important to bear in mind the real distress caused to individuals. I shall mention two. Mr McDonald of Danbury in my constituency was employed by Ford for 33 years and then spent four years working for Visteon. He believed the assurances given to him about the pay, conditions and pension entitlements, which would mirror those that he had enjoyed during his time at Ford, and he therefore agreed for his pension to be transferred. Another of my constituents, Mr Sharpe of Heybridge, was employed by Ford for 27 years and by Visteon for three months. Both those individuals have seen their pension reduced by 50%. They believed that the Pension Protection Fund would offer some protection, which I hope the Minister will say a little about in his reply. The PPF suggested that it would guarantee that such people would receive 90% of their pensions, but that has proved not to be the case, as a result of how the rules work and the cap that has been applied.

[Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

My hon. Friend is an experienced parliamentarian. Does he agree that a turnout such as the one today indicates that the issue is not restricted only to Visteon plants? Visteon pensioners are spread far and wide. As someone who has witnessed many parliamentary debates, does he agree that the story that has unfolded is not so much “Ford” as “fraud”?

[Mr Whittingdale]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman; like him, I have attended debates in Westminster Hall where there have often been only one or two Members plus a Minister and the Whip on duty. The fact that so many Members turned out this morning demonstrates, first, the wide area from which Visteon employees have come, and, secondly, the strength of the feeling among many Members that Visteon pensioners have been treated badly and that justice must be done.

I shall quickly turn to another aspect of the case that I hope the Minister will talk about. The PPF has not protected my constituents in the way that they hoped it would—of course, the Pensions Regulator was not there at the time. We have met representatives of the Pensions Regulator, and I think it would be fair to say that it dropped heavy hints that if the powers that are available now had been available at the time, the transfer would have been looked at extremely closely, because, as has been mentioned, the sum transferred into the Visteon pension fund left it in deficit from the start.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green said, not only was the pension fund in deficit, but the arrangement between Ford and Visteon meant that Visteon was almost bound to fail. It never made a profit. The pension fund became steadily further in deficit. Visteon was unviable from the start and it was almost inevitable that sooner or later it would go into administration.

Court cases are pending, so we must await their outcome, but I think that all of us feel that whether those cases prove that Ford has a continuing legal liability to its former employees is not, in a sense, the main thing. We all feel strongly that Ford has a strong moral obligation. It is a blue-chip company with a worldwide reputation. It is trusted, but how it has behaved to its former employees tarnishes that reputation. As has been said, that will reflect on how people view it, unless it does the right thing and gives justice to the people who gave it such devoted service for so long. The issue is not going away. We will continue to campaign until Ford meets its moral obligations.

Oral Answers to Questions

Bob Russell Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I do not agree, because that would mean a huge increase even on the numbers with which the previous Government left us. If we did that, it would include an extra 2.5 million children and an estimated cost of up to £1 billion. I wonder whether the hon. Lady has talked to her hon. Friends on the Front Bench about whether that is another spending commitment they would like to make.

[Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

The previous Labour Government left some 3.9 million children living below the official poverty line, about half of whom did not qualify for free school meals. Is it not time that the children who are most in need got the free school meals that they did not get under the Labour Government?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The introduction of universal credit will hugely help families with the lowest incomes. Something like 80% of the money is transferred to the bottom 40% on the income scale, so that helps hugely straight away. Secondly, it is very important that we have an opportunity for Departments—they will do this in discussion with us—to consider how best they can ensure that those most in need get the money and support they require.

Welfare Reform Bill

Bob Russell Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Maria Miller]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for making that point. He is absolutely right. Indeed, back in 1991 when the Child Support Agency was initially put in place, some £400 million of savings were attached to it because there was a pound-for-pound withdrawal of maintenance and the welfare benefits that an individual received.

[Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

What would the administrative costs be of levying the £20 fee and processing it?

[Maria Miller]

I just realised that I did not finish my response to the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field). He challenged me about the up-front cost, and why we were not just making an ongoing charge once money was flowing. It is very simple. We want not simply to use this to enhance a family’s income but to take the opportunity to help parents to consider whether they should go to the Child Support Agency as they could stay outside the system and make their own arrangements.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs McGuire]

The hon. Lady has a philosophical misunderstanding about people’s homes and houses. My mother lived in a local authority house all her life. She never thought it was anything other than her home. She did not see it as second class or inferior. She lived in it and it was right for her.

[Sir Bob Russell]

Does the right hon. Lady agree that successive Labour and Conservative Governments—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. That is not acceptable. The hon. Member for Devizes (Claire Perry) should not shout across the Chamber, “My grandfather lived in a council house, you twit.” She should apologise. Frankly, she and other Members need to calm down. There is a decorum to this place. I know the hon. Lady. She would not behave like that across the dinner table, and she will not behave like that in this Chamber. That is the end of it. I hope we have an apology.

[Mr Speaker]

Thank you. I call Sir Bob Russell.

[Sir Bob Russell]

Successive Labour and Conservative Governments from 1945 to 1980 built a massive supply of family council houses, but for the next 30 years, they did not. It is a question of supply and demand. Does the right hon. Lady agree that we need more affordable rented houses?

[Mrs McGuire]

I would not disagree with the hon. Gentleman. Housing was built in the 1940s and ’50s to deal with the nuclear family that everybody knew at the time. The way in which families have developed, including the growth in the number of single-parent households, was not factored in. That goes for the social rented and private sectors.

Oral Answers to Questions

Bob Russell Excerpts

Monday 24th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The position of the Housing Minister is correct, and I make it a principle to support him.

[Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

T4. Further to the Atos question asked earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff Central (Jenny Willott), does the Secretary of State agree that the company is not fit for purpose, that it treats many claimants in an unacceptable way, and that, frankly, it is time that its contract was terminated?

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)]

My hon. Friend needs to understand that Atos is simply a subcontractor to the Department for Work and Pensions. It does not take decisions about individuals. It simply operates to a template, which was mostly established under the previous Government. Of course we must be sensitive, but Atos and our other subcontractors are as careful as possible about the job that they do. Ultimately however, it is the Department itself that sets the policy and implements the processes, and that must take responsibility for the outcomes.

Oral Answers to Questions

Bob Russell Excerpts

Monday 10th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Maria Miller]

I not only have discussions with BIS, but have gone out to talk to employers about their commitments to employing disabled people. There are some great examples of major and smaller employers who have a real commitment to ensuring that disabled people have a level playing field when it comes to taking on jobs. Through that and the support provided by access to work and other programmes that the Government are running, I am sure that we can help more disabled people to get back into gainful employment.

[Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

Is the Minister satisfied that the people who operate the Motability scheme and those who sit in judgment on appeal tribunals are aware that the Government’s intention is to encourage disabled people into work? Those people should not drive disabled people who had work out of work by taking away their Motability cars.

[Maria Miller]

I can assure my hon. Friend that we greatly value Motability’s work in supporting not only disabled people who are in employment, but disabled people who are not in employment. We will be ensuring that that scheme is robust into the future. Many thousands of people enjoy the support of Motability and get great value from it.