Women’s State Pension Age
Brendan O'Hara Excerpts(7 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Mel Stride
The answer on timing is the same one that I have given consistently throughout this statement. I have been asked that probably three dozen times, and the answer remains the same. This is a complex report—[Interruption.] If the hon. Member will allow me to continue, that is not, as far as I am aware, a matter of dispute, even between the Government and the Opposition. We both accept that it is a complex report and that we need to look very carefully at the findings in order to come to conclusions. That is exactly what we will do.
Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)
Despite how the Minister might wish to spin it, the ombudsman’s report was absolutely damning, totally vindicating the WASPI women and their campaign. Too many people thought—indeed, fervently hoped—that they would give up and go away, but they picked the wrong fight with the wrong women. I congratulate Ann Greer and the Argyll & Isles WASPI women on never giving up the fight. My hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) has a private Member’s Bill that would require the Secretary of State to publish proposals for a compensation scheme for WASPI women. The vehicle is there, Minister. Will the Government now work with my hon. Friend and support his private Member’s Bill, so we can bring this matter to a conclusion as swiftly as possible?
Mel Stride
I am not familiar with all the details of the private Member’s Bill to which the hon. Gentleman refers. Whether the Government decide to support a particular Bill is clearly a matter for the usual channels and Government business managers, not for me at the Dispatch Box at this time.
Oral Answers to Questions
Brendan O'Hara Excerpts(1 year, 9 months ago)
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Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)
Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
Mims Davies
The hon. Gentleman talks about the Scottish child payment. The DWP is actively working with the Scottish Government to support its delivery, including by providing data through the Scotland Act 2016. I know that the hon. Gentleman has been holding cost of living events in his constituency. To his credit, he has been working with local jobcentres and the DWP to help people at this difficult time, which I applaud. The anecdotal evidence that I have of the AET changes, from visiting jobcentres, has been incredibly positive. People understand that they can earn more, take on more hours and fill vacancies, and that work is the best route out of poverty.
Brendan O’Hara
We on the SNP Benches have long called out this Government’s many poverty-inducing policies, such as the benefit cap, the five-week wait and the brutal sanctions regime, which contribute further to debt when people are barely surviving the cost of living crisis. Now, the Conservative think-tank Bright Blue—backed by some on the Government Benches—has said that the welfare system is not providing people with enough support and has called for the introduction of a minimum income. If the Minister will not listen to us, will she at least listen to her friends at Bright Blue?
Mims Davies
I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that issue. I will be very interested in the outcome of the work that the Scottish Government have been doing on the Scottish child payment system, taking the powers that have been devolved to the Scottish Government to support and link into their communities—that is absolutely what devolution is, and I will be following the outcome. But I reiterate that the work that goes on in his constituency and in the jobcentres that serve his community is also about people progressing through work, and that benefits are not the route out of poverty.
Elections Bill (Fourth sitting)
Brendan O'Hara ExcerptsThursday 16th September 2021
(3 years, 1 month ago)
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Chloe Smith
Thank you, Alan. As always, it is good to debate with you and really good to have your expertise.
Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)
Q
Dr Renwick: No, I was not. I would not expect to have been aware necessarily of all the consultations that might have taken place, but I do not recall being aware of the proposals before they were announced by the Minister in June. To be honest, that is problematic. I have expressed concerns about the substance of the proposals, but procedurally there is a difficulty here as well because of the point that I have already alluded to. With the best will in the world, and with full respect to you as MPs, the fact that you have a vested interest in this issue means that it is incumbent upon you to proceed with particular care when you are thinking about electoral matters generally, and particularly the governance of the Electoral Commission.
I think the procedure that ought to be followed in such a case is that there is an independent review before any recommendation such as those that have been introduced here are put forward. That was the case in 2000; the introduction of the Electoral Commission stemmed, if I remember correctly, from the Fifth Report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. The changes in 2009, introducing, among other things, the partisan commissioners, reflected recommendations made in, if I remember correctly, the Eleventh Report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. There has been no comparable process in this case. I do not think that that is an appropriate way to introduce significant changes in the governance of the Electoral Commission.
Brendan O'Hara
Q
Dr Renwick: I do not think it is for me to speculate on that to be honest. I regret that it has happened in this way. I have great respect for the Minister, and I hope that there may be scope for reconsideration of some of these aspects. For example, as you will all be aware, the CSPL published a report just two days after the Bill was published on the regulation of election finance, which of course is part of what the Bill covers. I would very much hope that the Government have been considering the recommendations made in that report, and might introduce amendments to take account of many of them. I thought it was an excellent report. I hope that there is scope to change elements of the Bill in order to reflect the views that have been heard since its publication, because I do think that steps up to that point were too hasty.
Brendan O'Hara
Q
Dr Renwick: The main point is that the governance of the Electoral Commission should stand up to proper scrutiny, and should be appropriately independent. Frankly, I am not sure whether it has much impact on public perceptions. I suspect that most people have higher priorities in mind. Certainly, the measures diminish the integrity of the electoral process, or will do if introduced, and that ought to be regretted. Quite what effect that has on public opinion as such, who knows?
The Chair
If there are no further questions from Members, thank you, Dr Renwick, for your evidence. It is much appreciated. The Committee will next meet at 9.25 am on Wednesday 22 September to begin clause-by-clause consideration of the Bill.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned.—(David Rutley.)
Child Poverty in Scotland
Brendan O'Hara Excerpts(5 years ago)
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Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I congratulate the hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Hugh Gaffney) on securing this important debate on child poverty in Scotland. The scourge of poverty and the effect that it has on our children, as well as the knock-on effects that it will have into future generations, is an issue that unites us all, and I am sure that many in this place, if not everyone, share much of the anger and frustration that he articulated in his opening remarks. Of course, he knows that child poverty is not confined to the central belt of Scotland; rural poverty is a blight as well. I know from personal experience in my Argyll and Bute constituency how awful it can be.
I thank all hon. Members who have taken part in the debate this afternoon. Notable by their absence have been the Scottish Conservatives. Some 21 minutes after the debate started, the hon. Member for Stirling (Stephen Kerr) rolled in, but no one from the Scottish Conservatives was here to contribute to this vital debate on an issue of importance to their constituencies, as it is to every other constituency in Scotland.
Brendan O'Hara
I will take your guidance, Sir David. Given that the hon. Gentleman turned up 21 minutes late and missed the opening speeches, am I allowed to take an intervention?
Sir David Crausby (in the Chair)
Whether or not to give way is entirely in the gift of the Member who has the Floor. Given that you have mentioned the hon. Gentleman, I think that you should give way.
Stephen Kerr
I am grateful to you, Sir David, for your judgment, and to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I tried to make a contribution during the previous speech. The hon. Gentleman’s attack on my colleagues and I, the Scottish Conservatives at Westminster, is all too typical of the antics that the SNP gets up to in this place. In relation to grievance, no one can match the SNP. It was said in the previous speech—I am sure that this will be the hon. Gentleman’s position as well—that if they had the ability to do something, the Government should do something on child poverty. Who is for child poverty? We are not. We are trying our best to eradicate it. The Scottish Government have the power to top up reserved benefits, so they could do something about this if they wanted to, but they do not want to because it is a convenient grievance.
Brendan O'Hara
Had the hon. Gentleman wished to make a speech of that length, he would have turned up in time and perhaps brought one or two of his Scottish Conservative colleagues with him.
As we have heard, there are 1 million people living in poverty in Scotland, and almost one in four of them are children. In 2019, 250,000 children living in one of the world’s richest nations are growing up in poverty. That is nothing short of scandalous. Poverty is not inevitable. People not having enough money to feed and clothe their children is not something that happens by accident. The existence of poverty in a country as rich as ours is a direct consequence of political choices.
The decade of austerity was a political choice. Massive long-term cuts to the social security budget were a political choice. The widening of the holes in the social security safety net so that more families and children would fall through was a political choice. The ill-conceived and hopelessly financed introduction of universal credit was a political choice. Making the poorest, weakest and most vulnerable in our society carry the can, and bear the brunt of a financial crisis that had nothing to do with them, was a political choice.
No matter how we look at it, it is an inescapable fact that the Tory Government, and indeed the Liberal Democrats, who were in the previous coalition Government—they, too, are conspicuous by their absence today—are directly responsible for plunging children and families into poverty across Scotland and the UK.
Dr Whitford
Is it not a disgrace that it has not been confirmed at this point that the benefit freeze brought in when inflation was at 0.3%—it is now 2.5%—will be done away with, as originally planned in April?
Brendan O'Hara
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention and will touch on that in a moment.
There can be no doubt that, as we have heard this afternoon, one of the main drivers of child poverty in Scotland has been the Government’s package of welfare reforms, which by any measure has been an abject failure. How else could one describe a package of reforms whose result is that 65% of all the children who live in poverty come from households where at least one adult is working? There is no need to take my word for it. The United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty said:
“Changes to benefits, and sanctions against parents...are driving the increase in child poverty”.
Some would still have us believe that it will take decades to turn things around and lift children out of poverty, but that is simply not true. There are measures that the UK Government could take right now that would immediately stop children and their families falling into poverty. One of those, which my hon. Friend the Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) just mentioned, would be to end the benefits freeze immediately. The Government should then immediately stop the roll-out of universal credit, take their time, and find the money to fix the major problems in the system, which they are only too well aware of but choose to ignore.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) said, the scrapping of the five-week minimum wait for a first universal credit payment must come to an end. The idea that poor people who are given advances need to pay them back serves only to plunge people further into debt. I congratulate the Select Committee on Work and Pensions on today’s report recommending putting an end to the two-child limit and its despicable rape clause. The idea that sanctions work for people has been proven untrue.
There is therefore a package of things that the Government could do immediately to stop the situation and turn it around. Of course, none of what I say will come as a surprise to the Minister, as we and others have been making the argument in this place for some time. We will continue to make it until the UK Government do something about it, or until the Scottish Government are given full powers over welfare or, better still, until they have them as an independent nation within the European Union.
My hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) spoke passionately and eloquently about the situation in her constituency, but her most powerful words came at the start of her speech when she quoted her constituent, Derek Kelter, who said:
“Poverty destroys everything in your life.”
Consider that. It is all that politicians need to hear, because it cannot be unheard.
As always, I am delighted that the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) has taken the time to be here. He made the powerful point that, although the debate is about Scotland, child poverty is not confined to Scotland but is rampant across every part of the United Kingdom. If it is a disgrace in Dundee, it is a blight in Belfast. If the UK Government cannot or will not do something about it, they should give the devolved Administrations the power to do so themselves.
My colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson), gave a powerful and moving personal testimony about poverty in childhood and how it leads to poverty of hope, aspiration and opportunity. Most movingly, she said that even though one might escape material poverty as an adult, the deep scars do not easily go away even in adulthood.
We have heard much this afternoon about what the Scottish Government are doing, and I am extremely proud that they are using the limited powers at their disposal to tackle child poverty. What sets them apart from the United Kingdom Government is the fact that they are determined to use every possible way to eradicate child poverty. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation recently reported that the building of 87,000 affordable homes since 2007 was a huge help, and that enshrining essential child poverty measures in statute is having an impact on how Scotland tackles child poverty.
My hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran was right to praise the new Scottish child payment, which will mean that £10 is given to every child in a low-income family that is in receipt of qualifying benefits. Initially, 170,000 children will be eligible for the payment, which will lift 30,000 children out of poverty by putting £1,000 a year into the pockets of their parents. John Dickie, director of the Child Poverty Action Group in Scotland, described the new payment as a “game-changer”, and he is right. The Scottish Government care about people and, despite the meagre resources available to them, will do what they can. Just think what they could do if they had full powers to create a more progressive, economically healthy and socially just welfare system.
It is worth recognising that the achievement of the Scottish Government in tackling child poverty has been singled out by the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty, who praised their
“ambitious schemes for addressing poverty, including the Fairer Scotland Action Plan and the Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan”.
The rapporteur also praised the Scottish Government for using their
“newly devolved powers to establish a promising social security system, guided by the principles of dignity”.
Perhaps the Minister should take note of what the United Nations has said about Scotland and encourage the UK Government to follow our example.
Oral Answers to Questions
Brendan O'Hara Excerpts(5 years ago)
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Guy Opperman
I am sure the Secretary of State looks forward to appearing before the Select Committee on Work and Pensions, of which the hon. Lady is a member, next week.
An advance is available to people in the usual way. Supported by the Treasury Committee and the Work and Pensions Committee, we have brought in the Money and Pensions Service to provide debt advice and budgeting support for claimants. There is no doubt that the extra money for Help to Claim, which is administered by trusted providers—whether that is the citizens advice bureaux or Citizens Advice Scotland—is very much helping the process.
Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)
As my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) said, it is Challenge Poverty Week in Scotland, and 400 events will take place to highlight the reality of living in poverty. One of the most significant push factors that take people into poverty has been the five-week waiting time between applying for universal credit and receiving it. Today, three quarters of a million households are unable to cover their outgoings during those five weeks and are trying to repay their universal credit advance. We know it, the public know it and I suspect the Department knows it; when will the Minister do something about it?
Guy Opperman
The hon. Gentleman will understand that it is an assessment period and no one has to wait to receive a UC payment. On migration, there will be a two-week run-on for both housing benefit and employment support benefits.
Brendan O’Hara
As part of Scotland’s Challenge Poverty Week, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has published a report that shows that the Scottish Government’s actions—such as the building of 87,000 affordable homes and the introduction of specific child poverty legislation—are making a real difference in tackling poverty. Given the fact that there is at least one Government on these islands who are determined to tackle the scourge of poverty in our society, is it not time for social security to be devolved fully to the Scottish Parliament?
Guy Opperman
There is much that I could say about the Scottish Government and their approach to welfare, but I will pass on that. The point is surely that this Government have introduced childcare changes, more employment and support on an ongoing basis, including through lower taxes. It is obvious that there is a benefit from the changes and advances we have made.
Child Maintenance Service: Payment Recovery from Absent Parents
Brendan O'Hara Excerpts(5 years, 1 month ago)
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Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)
As always, Mr Owen, it is a pleasure to see you in the Chair. I just wish that we had more time to debate this hugely important topic. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) on securing the debate and on his powerful and thoughtful opening speech; he spoke for many of us, and for many of those who have been badly let down by the Child Maintenance Service. All MPs deal day in, day out with a steady stream of child maintenance cases in which a parent can and does avoid paying, simply because the current system is not robust enough.
Earlier this year a constituent from Argyll and Bute contacted me about a case that had begun in the days of the Child Support Agency, which highlights the failure of the system. Back in 2015 the father of Fiona’s children declared through Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs that his gross annual income was just over £7,500, on which basis he was ordered to pay £20 a week to support his children. Knowing full well that that was not the case, Fiona appealed. Sure enough, the investigation that followed discovered that his true earnings were £200,000. The amount that he had to pay was increased accordingly, yet four years down the line, in a letter to my office dated May 2019, the CMS admitted that Fiona’s former partner was still in arrears to the tune of £68,000. That is unacceptable.
Fiona’s case is just one example—albeit perhaps an extreme one—of the cases that we deal with daily in which a former partner simply refuses to pay out. We have been contacted by a constituent who believes that the CMS is working on former calculated earnings; by a dad whose former partner refuses to pay out despite a CMS ruling; and by a young mother who feels that she has been sent from pillar to post, between the CMS and the Ministry of Defence, while trying to get regular payments for her eight-year-old daughter from her ex-partner in the Royal Navy. I could go on—there are numerous examples—but the fact of the matter is that the system simply is not robust enough; it is too open to abuse if one partner or the other is determined enough to avoid their parental responsibilities.
Children living in single-parent families are twice as likely to fall into poverty as children living with two parents, which makes regular maintenance payments even more important for securing their future and protecting them from falling into poverty. Charging single parents to access their right to support for their children is therefore completely wrong and unacceptable. It is grossly unfair that a receiving parent is charged £20 per application fee and a 4% deduction of maintenance when the CMS collects the payment, given that the CMS’s involvement is almost exclusively down to the fact that the payee is non-compliant with the rules. Why should children suffer at the end of that system?
There is ample evidence from stakeholder groups to show that the CMS’s charges have deterred many people from using the system. Indeed, a recent survey by the Department for Work and Pensions found that 40% of receiving parents on direct pay said that they found the application fee difficult to afford. That figure rises above 50% among those on very low incomes.
Will the Minister explain why we have a system wherein the people who need the money most—those parents whose children are recognised as most at risk of falling into poverty—are being made to pay to get something to which they are fully entitled? Is it not high time the Government heeded the call of so many people in and outside this House to remove all the hurdles that stand between single parents and the money to which they are entitled, to protect their children from poverty regardless of their situation? The primary role of the Child Maintenance Service should be to ensure that those children whose parents, for whatever reason, are no longer together, are not in any way disadvantaged because of it.
Local Housing Allowance and Homelessness
Brendan O'Hara Excerpts(5 years, 3 months ago)
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Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)
As always, it is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Bailey. I congratulate the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) on securing this hugely important debate and thank everyone who has contributed to it, including the hon. Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes) who, with his hands-on experience from the YMCA, shone an interesting light on this issue based on his own background.
As we have heard so often this morning, there is an inescapable and undeniable link between the paucity of affordable rented property in the private rented sector and the increased risk of people becoming homeless simply because they cannot afford to meet the cost of living in private rented accommodation. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) was absolutely right when he described the “chasm of difference” between what those people are expected to pay and what they can afford to pay. To back up what the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall said, local housing allowance should be there to help those on low incomes meet the cost of renting a home, and provide stability and security in their housing situation and prevent the risk of falling into homelessness.
The hon. Members for Westminster North (Ms Buck) and for Stroud (Dr Drew) were also right in what they said. They gave all-too-real examples of what happens to people, particularly the poorest and most vulnerable in our society, who are told that they can no longer afford to live in the areas where they have grown up and in which they have roots and families. It is little wonder that social problems follow as people are moved further and further away from the areas in which they have those roots.
However, let us be absolutely clear: this housing crisis, particularly in England, as well as the rising levels of homelessness and rough sleeping, did not happen by accident. There has not been some unforeseen set of circumstances that has led to the number of households living in temporary accommodation in England rising by 60% between 2012 and 2018. There has been no unexpected or unforeseen quirk that has led to the number of rough sleepers in England nearly doubling over the past five years—far from it. This housing crisis was all too predictable, because just about every stakeholder warned the Government right from the start about the inevitable consequences of pursuing their austerity agenda. When they froze local housing allowance and failed to meet their targets for building social housing, what did they expect to happen, other than a rise in homelessness and the number of people sleeping rough on our streets? That is exactly what has happened, so let us call this what it is: a crisis entirely of the UK Government’s own making.
It is incontestable that the UK Government’s austerity agenda has had a hugely negative impact on people’s ability to rent private sector accommodation. Research from the Chartered Institute of Housing shows that many LHA rates now fail to cover even the cheapest third of rents as they were designed to do, and a survey carried out by the National Housing Federation and the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations found that tenants on universal credit were more than twice as likely to be in debt than other tenants.
This year alone, the Scottish Government will spend in excess of £125 million to mitigate the worst impacts of those cuts and seek to protect those on low incomes. That will include £50 million to mitigate the bedroom tax and £63 million in discretionary housing payments, of which £1.3 million will be used to directly offset the impact of the LHA freeze. However, it is not the responsibility of the Scottish Government to foot the bill for the Tories’ austerity programme; that is the UK Government’s responsibility, and theirs alone. By lifting the benefits freeze, the Scottish Government will no longer have to plug those gaps caused by austerity, and those funds can be spent on other vital services that benefit the people of Scotland.
The freeze to local housing allowance has had a devastating impact on the poorest people in our society. Removing the freeze and reinstating its true value would be an enormous help, but that is only part of the answer. Only by increasing the supply of affordable housing will long-term, sustainable solutions to the crisis be found. Last month the Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince), admitted exactly that in reply to an urgent question, saying that a lack of new housing was a major factor in the rise of homelessness, and that,
“successive…Governments…have…not built enough affordable…social …housing.”—[Official Report, 13 June 2019; Vol. 661, c. 833.]
We have heard from others this morning, including the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), that the shortage of housing, particularly for social rent in England, is a major contributory factor to the rise of homelessness. The right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) was absolutely spot on when he said that it was fuelling both the invisible and the visible housing crisis.
The Centre for Policy Studies reckons that England is on course for its worst decade of house building since the second world war. It has calculated that the total number of completions between 2010 and 2019 will average out at 130,000 a year, which is down 20,000 from the figure of the 1990s and 2000s, and is at only half the level seen in the ’60s and ’70s—a successive pattern that has continued for almost half a century. As I said at the start, the issue is about political choices and Governments deciding what their priorities are and what they deem to be important. That is why I fully commend the work of the SNP Scottish Government, who have delivered 76,500 affordable homes since 2007 and are investing more than £3 billion to deliver another 50,000 affordable homes by the end of the current parliamentary Session in 2021. That figure will include 60,000 homes for social rent, 7,000 homes for affordable rent and just over 20,000 homes designed for affordable home ownership. In addition, the Scottish Government continue to support the empty homes partnership, which has brought 3,200 empty homes back into use since 2010.
To put the figures into perspective, between 2007 and 2018, the supply of affordable housing per head of population in Scotland has been a third higher than in England. In the four years to 2018, the Scottish Government have delivered 50% more affordable housing units per head of population than the UK Government have for the people of England. In those four years, the Scottish Government have delivered a remarkable five times more social rented properties per head of population— 84 units per 100,000 compared with only 13 for the people of England. That is not because the Scottish Government have a magic wand and are able to do things that this Parliament cannot do. It is simply that the Scottish Government have prioritised housing as a fundamental of any decent society and, despite a shrinking budget, have invested accordingly. Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, the Scottish Government have stopped the right to buy in Scotland. We have protected social rented homes and prevented them from entering into the private sector to the tune of up to 15,500 houses in the past 10 years.
In conclusion, as I said earlier, what we are witnessing, particularly in England, is a crisis entirely of the UK Government’s own making. Knowing full well the consequences of their actions, the Government steamed ahead, creating a perfect storm where punitive, arbitrary and deeply damaging cuts to welfare, coupled to a devastating under-investment in building social housing, have led to soaring rents in the private sector and caused a spike in homelessness and rough sleeping. It is the UK Government’s own mess. When will they wake up to the crisis that they are creating?
Oral Answers to Questions
Brendan O'Hara Excerpts(5 years, 7 months ago)
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Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)
Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Justin Tomlinson)
Household incomes have never been higher. In 2016-17, there were 1 million fewer people living in absolute poverty than in 2010. In Scotland, whichever way we look at poverty—relative or absolute, and before or after housing costs—in the three years to 2016-17, no measures are higher than in the three years to 2009-10; in fact, three are lower.
Brendan O’Hara
A few weeks ago, a young family with a newborn baby appeared at my constituency office in Helensburgh. They were halfway through their four-week universal credit assessment period. This was a family in crisis. They were penniless, and the father had not eaten for three days. They did not even have enough money to buy baby milk and had been refused healthy start vouchers because they ticked the wrong box. Is that not the reality of the poverty being created by the Government?
Justin Tomlinson
I am sorry to hear about the circumstances of that case, and I am happy to look into it further. One of the recent announcements we have made is that there will be Citizens Advice support within every jobcentre from April onwards. That is the sort of case where Citizens Advice can step in and provide independent support and advice, to ensure that people get their full entitlement.
Social Security and Employment Support for Disabled People
Brendan O'Hara Excerpts(5 years, 8 months ago)
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Sarah Newton
I very much thank my right hon. Friend for his contribution in the Chamber today and for all the work that he did when he had the privilege of holding this office. He is absolutely right to say that we want to be more ambitious. We will be looking carefully at how we can set ourselves really ambitious goals to ensure that everybody in our country has the opportunity to fulfil their potential in work, and that business, civil society and the public sector can draw on the talents of the very many disabled people who are unemployed at the moment. He is also right to talk about the importance of adult social care. It is of course the Department of Health and Social Care that leads on this, but I work closely with it and I have been encouraging it to go ahead and publish that very important Green Paper so that we can take forward those urgent reforms and enable more people to live independent lives.
Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)
I cannot help but feel that this announcement was a missed opportunity to completely overhaul the punitive PIP assessment progress, which is deeply flawed and continues to be criticised by claimants and stakeholders. The latest PIP assessment tribunal statistics show that from June to September 2018, a staggering 72% of cases found in favour of the claimant. The Minister will be aware that Scotland is taking a wholly different approach, proposing to significantly reduce the need for face-to-face assessments, introducing rolling awards with no set end points, and ensuring that those with fluctuating conditions will not face additional reviews. That is what a system based on dignity and respect looks like. What are this Government doing to address the fact that claimants are still being wrongly assessed at such a staggering rate? Will she look at what the Scottish Government are doing to reduce the burden that is being placed on disabled claimants? Will she also agree to study carefully the responses to the consultation announced yesterday by the Scottish Government on delivering a fairer disability assistance benefit programme in Scotland?
Sarah Newton
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his questions. I should like to reassure him that I do indeed work with my opposite number in the Scottish Government, and that we are working closely together as we go through the process of devolving PIP and other benefits to Scotland. Actually, we are testing and learning a great deal from each other. The UK Government are investing a great deal in health and work trials, and we work collaboratively on those. We are always prepared to learn from any part of the United Kingdom. I absolutely agree that too many people are having their decisions overturned on appeal—we want to ensure that we get all the decisions right first time—but it is worth keeping this in perspective, because 10% of all PIP claims go to appeal and only 5% are overturned. However, as I always say from the Dispatch Box, one person’s poor experience is one too many. We have been doing a lot of work with the Courts and Tribunals Service to bring down waiting times, and I hope that all Members will join me in welcoming the fact that we now have a new PIP online appeal service. Since November, people can resolve their appeals online, which is enabling far swifter resolution of those issues.
Social Security
Brendan O'Hara Excerpts(5 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)
As much as on one level I would love to say otherwise, with some reluctance I say that we will not oppose this statutory instrument this evening. However, just because we do not seek to block these paltry, parsimonious increases to some social security benefits, Government Members should not think for one moment that we think that these miserable, inflation-linked rises are in any way adequate or go far enough to assist those in our society who are in most need of help.
Alison Thewliss
Does my hon. Friend agree that the WASPI women are one such group who deserve a pay rise and deserve the money that they have paid in but have not received? Does he pay credit to the women who came to march in Govan a couple of weeks ago not just from Scotland, but from other parts of these islands?
Brendan O’Hara
I absolutely do. My hon. Friend and many other Opposition Members have been fantastic champions of the WASPI women. I pay tribute to the WASPI women—in my time as a Member of Parliament, I do not think that I have come across a more co-ordinated, invigorated group. Those who attended in Govan should be left in no doubt that we know that they have not gone away and that they will not go away until justice is done.
As far as the Scottish National party is concerned, the Government stand accused of deliberately widening the gaps in the social safety net. If they push on with the final year of the benefit freeze, they will do so in the full and certain knowledge that those gaps will get wider. As they widen, low-income families, children, the sick, the working poor, the unemployed, the vulnerable and disabled people will continue to fall through that net—the collateral damage in the Government’s ideological crusade to seek to balance their books on the backs of the weakest in our society. I believe that, along with the catastrophic Brexit that we are about to face, entrenching poverty across the UK will be this Government’s legacy. I reiterate that these cuts are not a necessity. This is a political choice. These cuts are simply ideological.
Almost two years ago, the Prime Minister said famously, in response to a nurse who asked why she and her colleagues had not been given a pay rise, that
“there isn’t a magic money tree that we can shake that suddenly provides for everything that people want”.
Really? No magic money tree? You could have fooled me, because as far as I can see, there always seems to be a magic money tree handy when the Prime Minister needs £1.6 billion to bribe English MPs to back her appalling Brexit deal. There always seems to be one when her Government need to find £1 billion to buy off the Democratic Unionist party in order to keep themselves in power. Of course, there is always a magic money tree around when the historically hopeless Transport Secretary needs to be bailed out when he—as we know he will—messes things up again. Perhaps a more accurate answer to that nurse would have been, “Of course there’s magic money tree but not for the likes of you and those others who need it most.” Perhaps an even more honest answer would have been, “Of course there’s a magic money true, and you and the millions of people across the UK hammered by this Government for almost a decade are that money magic tree,” because the billions of pounds taken from the poorest and most vulnerable in our society have gone to bankroll much of the Government’s programme, and it has left deep wounds across many communities in the United Kingdom.
Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)
As usual, the hon. Gentleman makes an impassioned speech—I admire the passion he brings to this debate—but the SNP are running away from their responsibilities for certain social security payments that it is within their power to take responsibility for. They cannot even begin to put their arms around the administration of those devolved responsibilities until 2024. When they talk in such impassioned terms, we have to match their words, sentiment and passion with the reality of the actions of the SNP Scottish Government, which are lacking in this significant area.
Brendan O'Hara
That is the sort of patent nonsense I have come to expect from Conservative Members. The Scottish Government have spent hundreds of millions of pounds in mitigating the worst excesses of this callous UK Government. The bedroom tax, universal credit and carer’s allowance have all been mitigated by the Scottish Government. However, I am sure the hon. Gentleman would agree that the Scottish Parliament is not a mitigation Chamber for this Government. As long as we are to be in this place and this Government control the vast majority of welfare legislation, this is the source of the problem. As responsibility for benefits gets to the Scottish Parliament, we will use it properly and in time, but my goodness I will take no lectures from the Conservative party about universal credit and welfare.
I reiterate the oft-made calls from the SNP Benches for the UK Government to end their deeply damaging and socially divisive benefits freeze. In the last three years alone, the value of benefits affected by the freeze has fallen by more than 6%, meaning that those who can afford it the least have been hardest hit. This is seen as one of the key drivers in pushing up the number of children living in poverty across the UK. Data from the Office for National Statistics shows the reality of the benefits freeze on something as simple as the cost of basic foodstuffs. In the past three years, when working age benefits have not increased at all, the reality facing families on benefits is that bread is now 11% dearer, sugar is 17% more expensive, whole milk is up 12%, tea and coffee are up 7% and butter is up an incredible 23%. That is the price increase since 2016.
It goes without saying—or it should—that poorer families are hit hardest by economic shocks. The poverty premium means that what middle-income families may consider to be a small economic shock, such as a rise in the cost of bread or milk, has a much greater impact on those with smaller incomes who have less disposable income. The Social Metrics Commission report on poverty in the UK published last year found that 2.5 million people were living less than 10% above the poverty line. Relatively small changes in their circumstances could mean they easily fall below it.
Alison Thewliss
My hon. Friend is making some very good points about the cost of living. Is he aware that the UK Government’s cuts and their restricting of the child element of universal credit to the first two children in a family mean that a single mum with three kids working 16 hours on the Government’s pretendy living wage will have to work 45 hours to make up the difference from the cuts?
Brendan O'Hara
I was aware of that. The statistics are shocking, as I will come on to shortly.
In this, its final and most punishing year, the benefits freeze will claw back nearly £4.5 billion. That is nearly £1 billion more than the amount for which the Government budgeted. Late last year, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation said that, by lifting the freeze a year early, the Government could take 200,000 out of poverty. Given the economic turmoil that is expected as a result of Brexit, the Government know that the quickest way in which they could get money to those who need it most would be simply to lift the freeze. It is not too late to do that. As we heard from the hon. Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood), they could introduce primary legislation as soon as they wanted in order to remove the four-year freeze section from the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016, and they could introduce a statutory instrument to uprate benefits ahead of April. Like the hon. Lady, I can guarantee the support of my right hon. and hon. Friends if the Government were to take that bold and imaginative step.
We said at the outset, back in 2015, that the imposition of a benefits freeze was morally reprehensible, but to continue that freeze in the face of the almost unprecedented economic uncertainty caused by Brexit would, in my opinion, be an unforgivable abuse of the weakest and the most vulnerable in our society. In his report of November 2018, the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights wrote:
“Given the vast number of policies, programs and spending priorities that will need to be addressed over the next few years, and the major changes that will inevitably accompany them, it is the most vulnerable and disadvantaged members of society who will be least able to cope and will take the biggest hit.”
Worryingly, he also wrote that, on the basis of his meeting with UK Government officials,
“it was clear…that the impact of Brexit on people in poverty is an afterthought”.
If, back in 2015, the Government intended those receiving benefits to suffer the effects of austerity more than most, they have certainly succeeded. Recently published statistics from the Resolution Foundation make sobering reading. According to the foundation, basic support for jobseekers will be equivalent to 14.5% of average earnings in 2019-20, its lowest ever level. Only once since its introduction in 1979 has child benefit for a first child been lower, and for a family with two children, its value has never been lower.
We all know that the 2015 Budget contained some of the most punitive cuts in social security that this country has ever seen, which are now beginning to actively reverse previous reductions in child poverty. Today, in some of the poorest areas of the United Kingdom, child poverty rates are running at 50%. That is an unbelievable figure in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, although, sadly, it is all too believable in one of the most unequal countries in the developed world. According to Oxfam’s analysis of the 2016 Credit Suisse report, just 600,000 of the UK’s richest people are worth 20 times as much as the poorest 13 million combined.
It is predicted that, if the Government continue on the same path, 200,000 more children will be growing up in poverty by 2020. The Resolution Foundation has said that child poverty is projected to rise by a further 6% by 2024, which would mark a record high. I understand that the Government will soon publish some very damning child poverty statistics, but must we wait for those figures to come out before the Government start to listen to calls for them to change direction? According to the Child Poverty Action Group and the Institute for Public Policy Research, Government policy, particularly the two-child policy, will be responsible for pushing hundreds of thousands of children into poverty. When giving evidence to the Work and Pensions Committee in December 2018, CPAG said of the two-child policy:
“You could not design a better policy to increase child poverty than this one”.
Alison Thewliss
That is absolutely right. It is welcome that the Secretary of State rowed back on making the policy retrospective, but it will still have a huge impact on child poverty in the future. If it is unfair to some families, it should be deemed to be unfair to all of them, and the policy should go altogether.
Brendan O’Hara
Absolutely. I could not have put it better myself.
What the Government have created is a social security system that believes people can be punished out of poverty. They have created a system where benefits are fraught with the threat of sanctions, and where disability assessments are psychologically and physically distressing and involve an appeals system so complex and drawn out that they actively discourage claimants from accessing the support they are due.
This is not a system based on dignity or respect; it is a system where all too often compassion is the exception. This is a system deliberately designed to afford the individual claimant as little personal respect as possible, and a system deliberately designed to make the poorest and most vulnerable in our society pick up the tab for an increasingly incompetent Government as they desperately cling to power.
Justin Tomlinson
It is delivering record employment in every single region. Increased corporation tax receipts are the folly of the hard-left failed economic policies that deliver higher unemployment every single time, which is why voters repeatedly reject failing Labour Governments.
Justin Tomlinson
I will just make some progress.
Many speakers talked about poverty. Income inequality has fallen—it increased under the previous Labour Government. Rates of low income and material deprivation for children and pensioners have never been lower. There are 300,000 fewer children in absolute poverty and 200,000 fewer pensioners in absolute poverty. In the past five years food affordability has almost halved and is well below the EU average.