Oral Answers to Questions

Carolyn Harris Excerpts

Monday 21st November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

4. Whether his Department plans to take steps to introduce new transitional protection for women adversely affected by the acceleration of increases in the state pension age.

[Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)]

5. Whether his Department plans to take steps to introduce new transitional protection for women adversely affected by the acceleration of increases in the state pension age.

[Tracy Brabin (Batley and Spen) (Lab)]

11. Whether his Department plans to take steps to introduce new transitional protection for women adversely affected by the acceleration of increases in the state pension age.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Harrington]

As the hon. Lady has mentioned, Labour proposed using pension credit as a transition mechanism for helping these women. This was discussed extensively during our debates on the Pensions Act 2011 as it went through Parliament, and it was decided that £1.1 billion would instead be used as transitional relief.

[Carolyn Harris]

It is quite obvious from the Minister’s response that he is fed up with these questions, but I will keep asking them so long as I have women, such as my constituent Gillian Purcell, coming to me and saying, “I’m 60. I’ve worked all my life, but my body is telling me I can’t do it any more without a pension”. When will the Government do the honourable thing and start looking after the WASPI women?

[Richard Harrington]

The cost of reversing the changes varies depending on whom one asks. The different political groups have come up with different amounts, varying between £7 billion and £30 billion, and that is quite apart from the substantial practical problems, such as risk of legal challenge, deliverability and all the problems associated with such options.

Oral Answers to Questions

Carolyn Harris Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

Universal credit, which is now being paid to more than 300,000 people, has already shown that people will get into work and progress in work faster and that they are more likely to seek work. If the Opposition accept, as I think they do, that work is the best route out of poverty, they will welcome universal credit because, when it is paid to more parents it helps children in those families to be in households where there is work. That will be the best way to get them out of poverty.

[Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)]

4. Whether his Department plans to take steps to introduce transitional protection for women adversely affected by the acceleration of increases in the state pension age.

[Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

14. Whether his Department plans to take steps to introduce transitional protection for women adversely affected by the acceleration of increases in the state pension age.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Pensions (Richard Harrington)]

Transitional arrangements are already in place. We committed £1 billion to lessen the impact of the state pension age changes on those who were affected, so that no one would experience a change of more than 18 months. In fact, 81% of women’s state pension ages will increase by no more than 12 months, compared with the previous timetable.

[Carolyn Harris]

Last week, I and more than 100 cross- party colleagues presented petitions in support of the Women Against State Pension Inequality campaign. Will the Minister acknowledge that those women have been subject to a grave injustice and that now is the time for the Government to introduce appropriate transitional payments for the women most affected by the pension changes?

[Richard Harrington]

I can only reiterate to the hon. Lady what has been said many times before. The Government made transitional arrangements that came to more than £1 billion. [Interruption.] She is chuntering at me from a sedentary position. I could not hear, but will try to imagine what she was saying. The Government have made the transitional arrangements, and no further moves will be made to assist those women, all of whom will benefit in time from the significant increase in the new state pension.

Disability Employment Gap

Carolyn Harris Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Heidi Allen (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

I think most Members would accept that Governments of all colours have not done enough to support disabled people into work. This debate centres on whether the commitment made by this Government to halve the disability employment gap is progressing quickly enough, and in the right way. Looking simplistically at the numbers, which many Members have touched on today, there are now 365,000 more disabled people in work than two years ago, and more than 3.3 million in work in total, so we have made a good start. But we would all agree that it is not enough, and guess what? We believe that we should be working on this together. I am sorry that the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) has just left the Chamber, because I was so disappointed in his tone; I know he can do better.

We have accepted that we need to do things differently, so a Green Paper and a fresh new approach are exactly what we need. But we cannot rush that. I am disappointed not to have seen the Green Paper yet, and the disability charities I have spoken to are also eager to see it, but we need to decide whether tweaking existing systems and policies to meet a deadline is better than taking our time and getting it right. I do not think that it is. After all, any changes we make will affect the most vulnerable in society. I know that the new Secretary of State is determined to get this right, and disability charities have conveyed that sense to me too.

Although speed must not be our only goal, we must, I am afraid, keep in the back of our minds a deadline we have created for ourselves. I am sorry to say that the decision to cut the ESA work-related activity group before the White Paper had emerged was wrong; I regret the Government’s decision. It would give an incredible boost to the disabled community if they were to commit to freezing that decision just until the White Paper is agreed. If we can, we should. It should be a positive, ambitious and anticipated document. It is not enough for a Government simply to provide the financial and healthcare support for everyday living; we need to do everything we can to unleash the untapped potential skills and hopes of people with disabilities.

When I spoke to a gifted IT graduate with learning difficulties, she did not want to be protected from society; she wanted to be out there helping to build it, so why on earth could she not find a job? As a member of the Work and Pensions Committee, I have seen how the existing Work programme has simply not worked for disabled people. It is hugely successful for those closest to the jobs market, but not for those with physical or mental health issues. As our jobcentres evolve to support universal credit, so our work coaches will need to perform comprehensive triaging right from the beginning and provide a dedicated path of support from day one. People must not be allowed to sit on the merry-go-round of the system for two years before anything positive happens to them.

We need to make much better use of small third-party providers, such as the Papworth Trust in my constituency, which is one of the most highly regarded disability charities yet is running mainstream Work programme services because the payment method for specialist work choice provision is commercially unviable. That is ridiculous. Specialists know how to support disabled people and to identify what they can do, whereas much of the current pathway to employment focuses on what they cannot do.

The White Paper needs to look at the whole world of a disabled person, so if the Secretary of State does not mind, I am going to add a few things to his list. Do they have good accessible housing? What about the social care to support them at home and to help them get up and get out the door? It is not just about the employment services. We have to understand what they need. It is not enough just to treat the benefit application processes; the entire journey through ESA and PIP needs looking at again, and that should be coupled with a cross-departmental assessment of everything a disabled person needs to fulfil their potential.

[Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Lady agree then that placing medical professionals in doctors surgeries is counterproductive, as people are likely not to seek medical care for fear of being reported to the Department for whatever illness they have got?

[Heidi Allen]

Forgive me—I am honestly not seeking an extra minute—but I genuinely do not understand the question. Did the hon. Lady mean medical professionals in jobcentres?

[Carolyn Harris]

No, doctors surgeries.

[Heidi Allen]

Perhaps we can have a conversation later, because I do not understand the question. I am sorry.

Departments need to work together—hell might freeze over—and perhaps share budgets. Having the right housing, for example, is the absolute beginning of a disabled person’s journey to work. If the fund available to deliver the Work and Health programme is significantly less than those for its predecessors, the Work programme and Work Choice, we will need to be smarter about how we spend it. Let us target young disabled people before they leave school. I heard the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Neil Gray) talk about his nephew. It is absolutely wrong. We should be getting in there and grasping people’s potential before they come to feel they cannot achieve. That is so wrong.

What about people who have only just gone on to ESA and disabled people who are in work? As we have heard, it is considerably more difficult for disabled people who have been out of the workplace for a long time to get back in. We need to get in there while their self-esteem is still high. I was once out of work for more than a year. It is flipping hard, and it is significantly harder for a disabled person. Access to work must also mean access to work experience and job interviews. You do not put fuel in a car when you have reached your destination; you need fuel for the journey to get there. And as we have discussed, people need to know about it too.

Would it not be great if we could design the process around the person, rather than pushing individuals with differing complex needs through a process just because the process was there first? We need to stop pushing square pegs through round holes; only then will we achieve our ambition of halving the disability employment gap. If the Secretary of State continues to demonstrate a willingness to make that happen, he and the Government will have my support.

Universal Credit (Children)

Carolyn Harris Excerpts

Tuesday 10th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for agreeing to hold this debate in the main Chamber. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), whose erudite and considered opening speech was a great contribution to the debate. The hon. Member for North Devon (Peter Heaton-Jones) talked about the broader context, and I will be only too pleased to do the same in a moment. My hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor) spoke powerfully about the plight of lone working parents, who are particularly affected by cuts to the work allowance. I certainly agreed with the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham), who is no longer in his place, on the idea of ensuring that we visit Jobcentre Plus offices to see universal credit in action, something which I did recently with my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham, but it is equally important to be in contact with local citizens advice bureaux and to visit food banks to see what is happening on the ground.

We heard a useful contribution from the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Neil Gray), who pointed out very well the new approach promised by the new Secretary of State of looking at people, not statistics. I look forward to the Minister telling us how she has changed her approach under her new boss, as I am sure everybody does. We also heard useful contributions from the hon. Members for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley) and for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford); my hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Christina Rees); the hon. Member for Horsham (Jeremy Quin); my hon. Friends the Members for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey) and for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty); the hon. Members for Foyle (Mark Durkan) and for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier); and my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck).

This debate comes at a key time—a key moment of test for the new Secretary of State—because the outlook is bleak. The Institute for Fiscal Studies expects absolute child poverty to increase from 15.1% in 2015-16 to 18.3% in 2020-21. The Resolution Foundation believes that 200,000 more children, predominantly from working households, will fall into poverty this year. Gingerbread powerfully makes the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton made about cuts to the work allowance hitting single parents particularly hard. There is a set of damning statistics on this, which the Children’s Society has set out. A working single parent can lose up to £2,628 a year. What was the Government’s response to that? What did they say could be done about that? They told the Social Security Advisory Committee that parents could work three to four additional hours a week on the national living wage.

[Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that to expect hard-working families to work an extra 200 hours a year just to make up for the cruel cuts in universal credit is an outright insult?

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about that. The hon. Member for North Devon wanted the broader context to be taken into account, so let us take into account the national living wage as well. A single parent who is already working full time on the national living wage of £7.20 an hour will have to work 46 extra days a year, which is more than two additional working months. How on earth can that be put forward as a reasonable proposition by anybody? It obviously is not reasonable.

The Government were warned about the problems they face today as a result of cuts to universal credit. The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission report released just before Christmas, on 17 December, said that the “immediate priority” had to be ensuring that the cuts to the work allowance planned for this April did not go ahead, but the Government simply did not listen. The problem that they are getting to is that their approach is starting to deny the very purposes that universal credit was set up for. The Resolution Foundation states:

“But it is also much changed as a result of the increasingly tight financial restraints placed on it over recent years. These have involved more than just a reduction in the money available under UC, they have also altered the very structure of the policy—changing the composition of winners and losers and fundamentally damaging its ability to deliver against its purported aims.”

Perhaps that explains why the Government are so terrified of publishing an up-to-date impact assessment. Perhaps it explains why they are so terrified of telling us the figures as to what they expect will happen to child poverty over this Parliament.

Personal Independence Payments

Carolyn Harris Excerpts

Wednesday 13th April 2016 Westminster Hall

[Justin Tomlinson]

The hon. Lady can shake her head, but that is why only 16% of claimants on DLA received it at the highest rate, yet the figure for PIP is 22%.

[Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)]

Does the Minister appreciate that my constituent Linda Isaac, who is currently receiving chemotherapy for bowel cancer, who has waited for 19 weeks only to be denied PIP and another nine weeks for a mandatory reconsideration, will not appreciate the modern “dynamic” PIP system that he is talking about?

Oral Answers to Questions

Carolyn Harris Excerpts

Monday 14th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

We may or may not get to question 21. Patience may be rewarded. We shall see.

[Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)]

Last Friday we heard that an additional £1.2 billion is to be cut from the PIP budget. That translates into £2,000 a year less for more than 60,000 claimants. What method or madness led the Minister to think that cutting support could help PIP claimants into work or to achieve independent living?

[Justin Tomlinson]

We are continuing to make improvements for claimants across the assessment process for PIP. At the end of this Parliament, we will continue to see increased numbers going through the system and benefiting from PIP.

Under-occupancy Penalty

Carolyn Harris Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd February 2016 Westminster Hall

[Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff Central (Jo Stevens), a fellow Welshwoman, on securing this debate.

This is a contentious issue of great concern to many people in my consistency. The bedroom tax is discriminatory and punishing. I want to share two short stories. The first is of Megan Wheatland from Bonymaen in my constituency, whose husband passed away in January 2013. He was of pensionable age and Megan was not; therefore, she was liable for the bedroom tax on the three-bedroom house she shares with her teenage daughter. Megan pays £11.85 a week for a small box room. Because of this, she is unable to pay for the extracurricular activities her daughter would like to take part in. She worries greatly that her daughter is missing out on all the other things that her teenage friends do. It really is an issue for Megan.

Then there is Sarah, a single mother with two children. She suffers from severe depression and has an arched spine. She struggles to engage socially and has suicidal thoughts. Because of this, her two children have been taken into care. Now Sarah is paying the under-occupancy penalty for a house that she should be sharing with her two children. It is an absolutely appalling situation.

We have heard about DHP, but it only kicks in after tenants have taken steps to downsize or—God forbid—take in a lodger. Some people who take in a lodger lose out on other benefits, because the rent on that room is classed as extra income. I am worried that taking in a lodger when there are children in the house is potentially dangerous, because it means that people are effectively taking a stranger into their home.

If disabled people have to move to smaller properties to avoid paying the bedroom tax, there is the inevitable cost of making adaptations. Surely supporting those who pay the bedroom tax—or, better still, scrapping it—would be a better use of public funds. It is estimated that 10% of disabled people renting properties live in homes specifically adapted to their needs. The cost of adapting a smaller property—or, potentially, a larger property—to suit the personal requirements of the new tenants surely outweighs any income gain from charging for the extra room in the first place. Of course, people can always move to the private sector. In Swansea, an above average number of homes were built between 1919 and 1944, but 15% of those old houses contain category 1 hazards, meaning that they have failed basic health and safety standards.

The Government do not hold data on how many disabled people are affected by the bedroom tax, so I contacted my local authority. I knew the number would be high, but I was shocked by just how high it is. In Swansea, the bedroom tax is paid on a total of 2,467 homes, of which 1,138 are in my constituency. Of the total number, 1,129 people paying bedroom tax are in receipt of at least one of the following benefits: attendance allowance, disability living allowance, personal independence payments or severe disability living allowance. That means that in Swansea a staggering 45.7% of the people paying the bedroom tax are considered to be disabled. The DWP’s evaluation of the removal of the spare room subsidy, which it published in December 2015, estimated that 75% of claimants have either a long-term illness or a disability, and they are living in homes to which the bedroom tax applies.

Historically, social housing policy in Wales has focused on creating sustainable communities and enabling families to become established, so there is a shortfall of one and two-bedroom homes. The Welsh Government’s pattern book for new social housing development requires landlords to build lifetime homes, so social landlords generally see one-bedroom homes as an inflexible and ineffective housing solution. The bedroom tax contravenes the principle of a lifetime home. Those in social housing at the start of their tenancy will have very different commitments and requirements from those they will have further down the road. The bedroom tax therefore creates a transient housing pattern, forcing continual relocation to suit housing needs. That is in direct contradiction to the concept of lifetime homes. The effect will be to damage communities, as they lose the momentum to develop as communities. If a resident is short term, they will not be there long enough to engage with the community and get active in social groups.

I go back to my original point: the bedroom tax is discriminatory and punishing. It financially punishes those forced to pay it and it discriminates—

[Jo Stevens]

On the point about the bedroom tax financially punishing people, does my hon. Friend think that it causes people to go to payday lenders such as Wonga and take out loans with extortionate interest rates to survive?

[Carolyn Harris]

I certainly do. I have casework involving people who have taken out payday loans from Wonga and other organisations and have been unable to repay them without not paying their bedroom tax. It is a Catch-22.

The bedroom tax financially punishes those forced to pay it. It discriminates against communities and individuals, and makes them unable to gel and enjoy stable, sustainable and adequate housing in a community where they can nurture and mutually support each other, and be part of a productive citizenship and community enterprise.

In-work Poverty

Carolyn Harris Excerpts

Thursday 28th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered in-work poverty.

It is a pleasure to serve under your excellent chairmanship, Mr Turner. This Government are failing to make work pay, and their cuts to in-work support risk increasing the number of working families in poverty even further. Over the previous Parliament, average real wages fell by more than £1,000 a year. Furthermore, 2010 to 2020 will be the worst decade for pay growth in almost a century and the third worst since 1860.

Cuts to universal credit that begin in April will make 2.6 million working families £1,600 a year worse off by 2020, making it almost impossible for families to work their way out of poverty. The Government’s advice to working families set to be hit by those cuts is to work an additional 200 hours a year to recoup the losses. That is neither fair nor practical for millions of low-paid families who are already working full time. I am delighted to have secured this debate, so that we in the Opposition can bring forward the reality of those in our constituencies who are experiencing high levels of in-work poverty and to call on the Government to scrap their cuts to universal credit before the cuts take hold in April.

We know from the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission that 1.5 million children are in poverty because their working parents do not earn enough to secure a basic standard of living. Four out of 10 children in working poor households live in families where parents might be expected to enter work or work more hours. Owing to high levels of in-work poverty, the commission has warned that the cuts to universal credit will—in its words, not mine—

“make many working families significantly worse off.”

The commission has recommended that the Government reverse their cuts to universal credit, saying:

“These changes would have resulted in millions of families in low-paid work who are ‘doing the right thing’ and working as much as society expects them to, seeing their annual income fall by thousands of pounds on 1 April 2016.”

Despite the fears, the cuts to universal credit are still going ahead. It will be very difficult for many affected families to increase their hours of work and hourly pay to avoid big cuts to their incomes.

[Christina Rees (Neath) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend know that 167,400 working families in Wales will be impacted by these cuts and that 134,600 of them are families with children?

[Carolyn Harris]

I do, and not only Wales is affected; this affects every constituency in the country.

[Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)]

Would it surprise my hon. Friend to hear that, under universal credit plans, some 116,000 disabled people who are in work—and therefore doing the right thing, according to the Government’s narrative—will be £40 a week worse off under the Government’s proposal?

[Carolyn Harris]

That is a shocking indictment of the low consideration the Government have for people in need. For example, a lone parent working full time on the minimum wage who receives no support for their housing costs will experience a reduction of £2,600 a year—that is £50 a week. Nobody can afford to lose £50 a week.

The combined effect of income tax, national insurance and the universal credit taper will mean that universal credit claimants who pay income tax will keep only 24% of any increase in their earnings. They will have to increase their earnings by £210 a week—or, to put it in percentage terms, 72%—to make up the income loss they will face as a result of the reduction in support.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner, and I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. She has given some figures about single parents, and this shows the full extent of the policy: for a single parent—say, a mother with one or more children—the work allowance of universal credit will be halved from this April, going from £8,808 to £4,764. In cash terms, that is a loss of £2,628 a year. Does that not show the stark reality of this policy?

[Carolyn Harris]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, and I agree. That is a reality people face every day, and it can only get worse.

The short-term effect for current claimants of universal credit is that they face huge losses to income come April 2016. There are currently 155,000 recipients of universal credit, and the number is increasing every week, with an aim of there being 500,000 recipients by April this year.

During Work and Pensions questions recently, the Secretary of State claimed that the flexible support fund will act as transitional protection for current claimants and said that

“those who are on universal credit at present will be fully supported through the flexible support fund, which will provide all the resources necessary to ensure that their situation remains exactly the same as it is today.”—[Official Report, 7 December 2015; Vol. 603, c. 688.]

However, that existing fund is used for a different purpose. Its budget last year was £69 million, but the Office for Budget Responsibility estimates cuts to working families of £100 million next year, rising every year until they reach £3.2 billion in 2020.

[Neil Coyle]

I apologise for not thanking my hon. Friend for securing the debate in my previous intervention or saying what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner. The Secretary of State was referring to the number of people currently receiving universal credit who will be protected by some measure, but is that not a little disingenuous given that the Government are about 1,000 years behind schedule on delivering universal credit? They had expected some 2 million people to be on it by now. Should the Government not be a bit more embarrassed about mentioning the small number who are already receiving universal credit?

--- Later in debate ---

[Carolyn Harris]

I agree entirely, and I will touch on that later in my speech.

When transitional protection is introduced for current tax credit recipients, the Government will bring in regulations to put that protection into law. Opposition Members are calling for the same guarantees—full transitional protection—to be put on a legal footing for current universal credit claimants. The medium-term effects of the cuts to universal credit will effectively create a postcode lottery or, as my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith), the shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, quite accurately described it, an “IDS lottery”. I doubt, however, whether those ticket holders will have a magic washing machine and end up as big winners. New and existing claimants of tax credits will receive far greater support than new and existing claimants of universal credit.

The longer-term effect by 2020 will be massively reduced support for working families. The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that by 2020, due to the £3.2 billion cut to the work allowance having been fully phased in, 2.6 million working families will be an average of £1,600 a year worse off. The Resolution Foundation found that when these cuts fully take effect by 2020, low and middle-income working families will lose an average of £1,000 a year, rising to £1,300 a year for those with children.

This is a political choice by this Government—a deliberate act to reduce drastically support for working families, at a time when the Government are cutting inheritance tax for homes worth more than £1 million. The contradictions in that comparison are frightening, to say the least. How can it be right to offer enhanced protection for those with wealth and catastrophic consequences for those who currently eke out a living on low pay? It cannot be right to reduce in-work support.

In my constituency office, we act as an agent for both the Trussell Trust food bank and the local Eastside food bank in Bonymaen, Swansea. We receive donations but also give out parcels in emergencies. Some 85% of the parcels given out are to families who are in work but struggling to make ends meet.

Further examples of the impact on working families from a detailed analysis by the Library show that a single parent of two children with gross earnings of £18,000 a year will experience a net reduction in their income of £2,601 next year, as a result of measures announced in the summer Budget that are still due to take effect in April 2016. For example, a single parent of one child who is earning the living wage will only increase their income by £40 for working an additional 12 hours. That compares with an increase of £92 for an additional 12 hours before the cuts to the work allowance were introduced.

It is time for the Secretary of State to stop playing cat and mouse with the real people of this country. The lack of Government Members here today indicates that they have bought into the Government’s rhetoric that in-work poverty is a myth and that they support the Government’s propaganda that it is of no real concern. However, the reality is that ordinary working people are continually playing catch-up, and all the Government want to do for them is to watch them run around chasing their own tails. It is immoral, irresponsible and reprehensible.

I am very proud to represent real people who are paying the cost of this Government’s arrogance, and I will fight to ensure that their voice gets heard. We are led to believe that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has threated to resign if his masterplan is not followed through. If cuts to universal credit really were an issue to resign over, he would be long gone, and if he was, many thousands of decent, hard-working people across the UK would be celebrating both his resignation and the moral victory.

--- Later in debate ---

[Carolyn Harris]

Will the Minister give way?

[Priti Patel]

Let me finish my sentence and I will. Wages have been growing faster than inflation for 14 consecutive months and, as much as the Labour party has been utterly disparaging about the introduction of the national living wage, which says a great deal about its attitude to pay increases, we know for a fact that when the national living wage is introduced later this year, we will see an enormous—

[Carolyn Harris]

Will the Minister give way?

[Gerald Jones]

It is a long sentence.

[Priti Patel]

I will give way in a moment. I have been very respectful by listening to and not intervening in the contributions of Opposition Members. More people will benefit when the national living wage is introduced in April.

[Carolyn Harris]

I feel suitably chastised. The Minister gave a list of job increases but she left off Tata Steel, where there have just been 750 job losses very close to my constituency.

[Priti Patel]

Tata is not a particular case study for Wales or the United Kingdom. I hope that the hon. Lady recognises that the steel industry faces huge challenges around the world. In China, people are also losing their jobs because of what has happened in the steel industry. Jobcentre Plus and the Department for Work and Pensions have been there from the outset to support people who have lost their jobs in the steel industry by helping their families at this very difficult time and supporting them to find work. The marketplace is challenging, but the hon. Lady is the Member of Parliament for a Welsh constituency and she has a duty to acknowledge the support that is being given—the work that Jobcentre Plus staff in her constituency are providing—to individuals and families who have lost their jobs.

--- Later in debate ---

[Carolyn Harris]

Thank you for your excellent chairmanship, Mr Turner. I sincerely thank all Opposition colleagues for attending this debate on a day when they could be at the coalface addressing the problems caused by this Government’s policies. I thank the Minister for her response, and I would have liked to thank her for her warm words, but “condescending” and “passionless” are probably better descriptions. I leave here no wiser than I was coming in, except now I know that there is a total lack of understanding and passion for what is really happening in the UK in 2016. I urge the Government to rethink.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered in-work poverty.

Universal Credit Work Allowance

Carolyn Harris Excerpts

Wednesday 6th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justin Tomlinson]

I will come on to those specific people—[Interruption.] In the overall numbers, it is the vast majority—[Interruption.] I am going to make some progress.

We have to see the bigger picture. A lot of the analysis that has gone on is static. Even the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which I know a lot of hon. Members will refer to, acknowledges that it is a static analysis. Universal credit is not a stand-alone measure. It is part of our wider, dynamic package of reforms to support families in work and to make sure work pays. We are raising the personal allowance to £11,000 for the next tax year, saving the typical taxpayer over £900 a year, and we have pledged to raise it to £12,500 by the end of this Parliament. The national living wage will come into effect from April. That will directly benefit 2.75 million people and it is forecast to reach over £9 an hour by 2020. That might upset Opposition Members who campaigned for £8 an hour, but we felt that that did not go far enough.

[Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)]

The House of Commons Library has given me some figures; I wonder whether the Minister will say that they are wrong. They show that a single parent working full time on the minimum wage will be nearly £3,000 a year worse off than they would have been on tax credits. I would appreciate some clarification on this from the Minister.

[Justin Tomlinson]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. I worked closely with her on our commitment to halving the disability employment gap, and I have a lot of respect for the work she does. In this case, the person—again, presuming it is a static analysis and that they are already in—will be cash protected as they are transferred to universal credit, so they will not be cash worse-off.

We have rising wages and near zero inflation. We have had 13 months—[Interruption.] We have strong economic growth, delivering record jobs and creating opportunities for people to get into work and to increase their hours. We have simplified the benefits system, reducing the potential for claimants to miss out on money to which they are entitled and, crucially, allowing them the time to focus on actually finding work, rather than on navigating the complex, chaotic system. We have already seen from the independent investigation that we are talking about 50% more time. We also have work coaches to support people in work, which is vital.

Welfare Benefit Changes

Carolyn Harris Excerpts

Wednesday 14th October 2015 Westminster Hall

[Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the effect of changes to welfare benefits.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. Since this debate was scheduled, I have been inundated with offers of briefings from so many social charities that I could speak for the entire 90 minutes, although colleagues will be relieved to hear that I do not intend to do that. Several national charities have provided so much compelling evidence that this debate needed to be heard. I pay tribute to Barnado’s, Gingerbread, Crisis and The Trussell Trust, and we will all have names of local hard-working groups that are swamped with requests for help from those in difficult times. In my case, they are the Eastside food bank in Bonymaen and the Jesus Cares organisation, which deliver monthly food parcels to my office, allowing me to offer practical support to families in great need.

The changes to the welfare system have featured heavily on this Government’s agenda. Ministers repeatedly tell us that the reforms will tackle benefit dependency and incentivise people to work, but it is clear from the Institute for Fiscal Studies analysis of the summer Budget that, taken in the round, the measures are regressive. Even taking into account the new national living wage and the increased personal tax allowance, many families will be worse off.

As the Resolution Foundation made clear last week, the Prime Minister’s rhetoric on tackling poverty and disadvantage is in stark contrast with the reality: 200,000 more working households could be in poverty by 2020. What is too often missing from this debate is full consideration of the impact that cuts to benefits can have on children. We must remember that children are never responsible for their parents’ decisions or any misfortune. They must not be punished. I therefore want to concentrate on some of the aspects of the Government’s proposals and the impact that they will have on the UK’s poorest and most vulnerable children and young people.

The Welfare Reform and Work Bill, which is currently in Committee, contains several measures that will have a significant impact on some of our most vulnerable families. The Government’s impact assessment shows that an additional 224,000 children will be affected by the change in the household benefit cap. Of course, the Government’s response is that people affected will simply choose to move into work and therefore avoid the cut in income. As hon. Members will know from their own constituencies, however, the situation is rarely that simple.

In 2014, a judicial review examined the impact of the benefit cap on two single parents. In the Supreme Court ruling, three of the five judges found that the benefit cap did not comply with the United Nations convention on the rights of the child. Statements from the judges included that the benefit cap deprived children of the “basic necessities of life” and made them

“suffer from a situation which is none of their making”.

The judgment suggests that the policy is incompatible with the UNCRC and underlines the need for future assessment of the impact of the benefit cap on children’s wellbeing. The Secretary of State will be able to change the benefit cap levels without full parliamentary scrutiny. It is important that the wellbeing of children, particularly very young children, is taken into account. The UNCRC provides a framework for this scrutiny and the Children’s Commissioners hold the expertise about the convention. An impact assessment into the wellbeing of children by the Children’s Commissioners would provide the Secretary of State with the evidence to make an informed decision on future benefit changes.

In my experience, if families are relying on benefits, it is usually because they face significant barriers to work, not simply because they do not see the point in getting a job. Some lack skills or confidence. Others may have mental health problems or health issues. Young parents may be struggling to care for their children. Whatever the reason, the best solution is not a punitive one. This is not just about the cap. Depending on inflation, the four-year freeze in working age benefits could have a significant impact for those on low incomes. There are also the cuts to tax credits. That is a debate for another day, but it is important to register that over 4 million families, accounting for 7.5 million children, will see a difference between getting by on a tight budget and not getting by at all as a result of the changes to tax credits.

As I said, despite rhetoric to the contrary, the summer Budget is regressive. Poor families will get poorer and many on the edge could be driven into poverty. Barnardo’s has calculated that for some of the most vulnerable families, the cuts will mean a significant drop in income. I cannot see how that is right or fair, or how it is in line with stated Government policy. The Government tell us that work is the way out of poverty. Indeed it could be and should be, but we cannot ignore the fact that poverty also affects families where one or more adults works.

A Barnardo’s case study tells of a dad who asked staff for some nappies. When the project worker attended the house to see how things were going, she discovered only biscuits and crisps in the cupboard. The parents were missing meals in order to feed the children, and they had not asked for help because they were too proud. That family provides a window into the reality of life for so many people. The mother works at a call centre and dad looks after their three small children, one of whom is not yet in school. Their house was deemed too big, but no smaller one was available, so they were hit with the under-occupancy subsidy—the nice phrase for the bedroom tax. They are working people, but their income just does not cover the basics. Reluctantly, they eventually asked Barnardo’s for help and were pointed in the direction of a food bank.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation stated that working single parents will be hit hardest by the changes in benefits. Under the current benefit cap, single parent households are disproportionately affected, particularly those with younger children. Since the introduction of the benefit cap, 63% of affected people were single parent households, of which 70% had a child aged under five. In May 2015, 76% of capped single parent households had a youngest child under five and 34% had a child under two.

According to Barnardo’s, a lone parent working full time on the national living wage for 37 hours a week with two young children could lose £1,200 a year from April 2016. For many single parents hit by the benefit cap, it will not be possible to reduce expenditure through budgeting or moving to cheaper accommodation. Gingerbread tells of a single parent with two primary aged children who phoned its helpline in June 2015. She is expecting a baby in October and was told that, when the baby is born, she will be subject to the benefit cap, causing a shortfall of £32 a week in her housing benefit. I urge the Government to consider how we can justify reducing support to such families. We must think again.

What about larger families with more than two children? Children in larger families are already 1.4 times more likely to be living in poverty. The Welfare Reform and Work Bill will limit support through both tax credits and the Government’s new system of universal credit, so that families receive help for only the first two children. As the Government’s impact assessment makes clear, the policy will disproportionately affect black and ethnic minority families, who are more likely to live in poverty and to have larger families.

We also need to consider the less obvious implications of the policy. What if a family with two children decides to adopt a third? What if a family with one child decides to adopt two siblings? We know that sibling groups often have to wait a long time for a new home. There is already a shortage of families able to take them. Given such difficulties, will the Minister not agree that such scenarios were not considered when the policies were drafted?

What about the withdrawal of housing support for 18 to 21-year-olds? In the summer Budget, the Government announced that from April 2017 unemployed 18 to 21-year-olds making a new claim for universal credit will not be entitled to support for their housing. Crisis has serious concerns that the removal of young people’s access to support for their housing costs will lead only to a further increase in youth homelessness.

For many young people, housing benefit is all that stands between them and homelessness. That includes care leavers and those who have experienced violence or abuse in the family household. Some might be unable to live with their parents because of a relationship breakdown, but are unable to prove that—for example, if a parent remarries or they have been kicked out for announcing that they are gay. All such scenarios for why young people need to leave home must be considered.

Young people who have already found themselves homeless might have been supported into accommodation funded by housing benefit. Between 2010 and 2014, Crisis helped to create 8,128 tenancies in the private rented sector for people who were homeless or at risk of homelessness. It is vital that young people should be able to maintain such forms of accommodation and that those at risk of homelessness should be able to continue to access them.

An example from Crisis is that of Ryan, who was in care as a young child and adopted at four. He never had a good relationship with his adoptive parents and as soon as he turned 16, in the middle of his GCSE examinations, they asked him to leave. Ryan spent the next four years living in a series of hostels, bed and breakfasts and temporary flats, with periods of homelessness. During that time his housing costs, when appropriate, were covered by housing benefit. He managed a college catering course, but found it too difficult when homeless.

The Government will introduce the cut to housing benefit for young people through regulation rather than in primary legislation. Perhaps Ministers anticipated resistance to removing support from vulnerable young people. Whatever the reason, it is outrageous to introduce such a change without giving hon. Members the opportunity to debate it.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Disabled People (Justin Tomlinson)]

The hon. Lady is making an important point, but she should remember that vulnerable young people will be exempted from the changes.

[Carolyn Harris]

I thank the Minister and look forward to seeing the exemptions, because so far it has not been made clear to us what they will be. This debate is a good time for us to be told about them. I also hope that the Minister will commit to publishing the regulations in time for a full debate in the House when the Bill is on Report.

My final point is about the sanctions regime. The increase in conditionality is significant, primarily because it will mean that parents with three or four-year-old children will be subject to financial sanctions—in other words, a loss in their weekly income. Any sanctions on claimants in my constituency, where nearly 10,000 are dependent on out-of-work benefits, will be catastrophic for their families. Barnado’s, Gingerbread, the Trussell Trust, Crisis and in fact all the charities and organisations tasked with helping those most affected by sanctions would describe the regime as unnecessarily punitive and not fit for purpose.

The Select Committee on Work and Pensions and other organisations have already repeatedly called for a broad independent review of conditionality and sanctions. It is imperative that such a review should take place before sanctions are extended to families with three and four-year-old children. We know that sanctions can be hugely disproportionate—a single mother missing an interview because her child became ill on the way to school, or a father delayed because he is on the phone to a school and misses an appointment by 10 minutes. Those are examples of everyday occurrences that will result in sanctions for people dependent on benefit. The resulting loss of benefits for weeks on end will leave families struggling to feed their children and to heat their homes. Barnardo’s has reported that parents using its services because of sanctions are being driven to food banks or further into debt.

I hope that, as a result of what I have said and what others will say, the Minister takes a message back to his Department and says that the voices of those affected by such cruel, punishing and crippling benefit changes need to be heard.

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on her excellent speech, which has covered so many matters, but I want to ask about a couple more. Does she share the concerns expressed by organisations such as Parkinson’s UK about, first, the appropriateness of progressive disease sufferers being placed in the work- related group and, secondly, how under the Government’s Bill employment and support allowance payments will be cut to the level of jobseeker’s allowance? There are serious concerns about people such as sufferers of Parkinson’s in that regard.

[Carolyn Harris]

I agree. No such section of society will not be affected by such heinous cuts. No section is safe from what is about to happen.

Voices need to be heard and what they are saying needs to be considered, with appropriate action taken. The damage that the cuts are having on the lives of vulnerable families is devastating. I urge the Minister to look into the eyes of a child suffering the effect of the Government’s policy and to reassure them that it is in their best interest. Removing “child poverty” from the narrative does not remove the problem. The Minister should look to his conscience, have a heart and take action now to stop any further damage to young lives.

--- Later in debate ---

[Carolyn Harris]

I welcome the Conservatives who have now joined us. We have been here since half-past 2; it would have been nice to see them earlier. I thank the Minister for his kind words, but I feel that I am leaving this room no wiser than I was when I came into it. The lack of his colleagues throughout the debate and the rhetoric in his answers have done nothing but confirm to me that this Government just do not care.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the effect of changes to welfare benefits.