Child Maintenance Service

Charles Walker Excerpts

Tuesday 27th February 2024 Westminster Hall

[Sir Stephen Timms]

The hon. Member makes a very important point, and I think he is right. I very much welcome his work and that of his colleagues on the Public Accounts Committee in drawing attention to a number of these problems.

I ask the Minister whether the idea of a single caseworker has now been abandoned. Is a domestic abuse team still in place or has that whole initiative, which the CMS talked to the Public Accounts Committee about last year, I think, now been given up? Why is it that someone such as Rachel Parkin has gone back to the arrangements that she was promised she would not?

In our report, we also raised concerns about paying parents who fraudulently attempt to reduce their maintenance assessment and about the fact that the Department does not estimate levels of fraud and error. The Public Accounts Committee, in its 2022 report— two years ago—said that the Department had

“not taken responsibility for detecting child maintenance fraud”

and had shifted the burden to receiving parents, who were expected to challenge false assessments. The Committee pointed out that a paying parent who was notified of being investigated for understating their income would no doubt guess that their ex-partner had reported them, and as a result, the Committee warned, many receiving parents would not report. I think that the Committee was right to make that point. In response, the Department said that it used risk profiling and threat scanning to target fraud in the child maintenance system and that it already had proportionate and cost-effective controls. Can the Minister tell us what exactly risk profiling and threat scanning are in practice?

We recommended that there should be specialist caseworkers for cases in which the paying parent’s income is from self-employment. In correspondence, the Minister in the other place who has responsibility for this part of the Department’s work, Lord Younger, pushed back on that, on the grounds of “funding implications”. However, the Department has said that it will legislate to ensure that unearned income, such as savings, investments, dividends and property income, is taken into account automatically when maintenance is calculated, to make it more difficult for

“the small number of parents who avoid paying the correct amount.”

Can this Minister tell us when that legislation will be introduced?

The Government have just introduced, as I mentioned earlier, secondary legislation to remove the £20 fee for all parents who apply for a statutory maintenance arrangement. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm that that took effect yesterday as planned. The same secondary legislation also introduced new powers for the Secretary of State to write off maintenance arrears under £7 in certain circumstances.

Finally, I want to make this point. There are, as all of us in the House well know, unending complaints about very poor customer service from the CMS. It is very difficult to get through; calls go unanswered. There are incorrect assessments, and people are having to tell their story again from scratch on every call. The service does have a very tough job, against a backdrop of pain and conflict; it is very difficult to provide a good service in that situation, but can the Minister offer us any prospect that the improvements needed will be made?

[Sir Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

Seven colleagues wish to speak. You have six minutes each. If you are on the list to speak and you intervene, that might reduce your time to four or five minutes if you are at the end of the list. I call Dr Thérèse Coffey—six minutes, please.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Charles. I congratulate the Chairman of the Work and Pensions Committee, the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms), on securing this important debate.

I recognise the importance of the Child Maintenance Service in trying to help children in low-income households. I give credit to Arlene Sugden, the former director of the CMS: she did a tremendous job and made a lot of changes. It is sad to hear that some of the reforms that she brought in might now have slid, but we should recognise that thanks to the CMS, more than £1 billion a year has made its way to the parents who look after the child for the majority of the time.

Several of us will have distressing stories. When parents come to us, they and their child are struggling. It is terrible to see how children are often used as pawns in a dysfunctional or non-existing relationship. That is why I really care about the Child Maintenance Service. In my time in the Department, I worked with my noble Friend Baroness Stedman-Scott to see what we could do to improve the experience for parents. Our priority was to reduce child poverty. With only one parent working, perhaps not full time, extra income from child maintenance was critical to boosting opportunities for the child.

I am conscious that in the majority of situations, whether they involve hiding assets or getting someone else to do a DNA test to avoid being identified as a parent, it is women and children who are affected. Men are also affected, however; I do not want to dismiss that in any way. Some of the most harrowing cases that I have heard have been those in which a father has been left with the children while the mother has been trying to avoid responsibility and, in some instances, lying to my face. Nevertheless, the Department continues to fund the Reducing Parental Conflict programme. The Child Maintenance Service is never seen to take sides between the two parents; it is seen to be on the side of the child. That is a vital approach.

I have already laid out how the issue matters to me. We started a strategy; it is good to see significant elements of that. I was delighted when my hon. Friends the Members for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) and for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart) took legislation through the House on the issue, with the support of the Government. As the right hon. Member for East Ham says, we are still waiting to bring into force these important Acts of Parliament with the important changes that are needed, and we are still waiting for commencement orders. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud says, it is vital for section 25 of the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act 2008 to come into force.

I appreciate that the Minister is very competent, but this matter is not in his brief; he is speaking for my noble Friend Viscount Younger and for the Government more broadly. In July 2022, the Department issued a call for a consultation—not a call for evidence—on enacting section 28 of the 2008 Act, which is about curfew orders. We have still not had a response to that consultation.

By the way, it is perfectly acceptable for a new Secretary of State to come in and change the approach taken by their predecessors and different Prime Ministers. I have no issue with that, but it is important that we hear from the Government what their intentions are. I am not a huge fan of doing lots of pilots. The Government have put forward legislation and Parliament has voted for it, so we should get on with putting it in place. That is one of my key messages. I will take this matter directly to the Minister when I meet him in March, but it could be useful to pre-empt some the questions.

One thing I discovered during our deep dive is that, for people who are not working or are on benefits, there is a “nominal” payment—it is actually quite a significant one for someone who does not really have an income—of £7 a week, to be paid from their benefits to the receiving parent. There are also challenges with universal credit when not everyone is not working, and there may be different elements of income support. One challenge with child maintenance is that those who do not pay everything may end up paying nothing, so over time they end up accruing money to which the child should be entitled. We need to look again at that. We also need to focus a lot more on work coaches getting people into work so that they can start paying for their children.

I will keep to my six minutes, Sir Charles. In essence, we need parents to cough up the cash for their children, and the Child Maintenance Service needs to facilitate that. I am glad that it seems to have dropped the idea that it would potentially do all collect and pay. The state does not need to be involved in every interaction between two parents, but when parents ask it to get involved it must do so to the best of its ability. I look forward to the commencement orders getting under way so we can make sure that children are put first.

[Sir Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

Thank you for being so helpful to the Chair and setting a fine example.

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[Jim Shannon]

It certainly is, and that is one of the problems. The Minister is a very compassionate and understanding Minister, and hopefully he will come back with the answers that we all seek. I am very keen to hear his thoughts on how we can we ensure better continuity.

Reforms have been happening, thanks to the hon. Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie). Like other hon. Members, I want to thank her personally, because it was her determination and commitment that enabled the Department for Work and Pensions to impose tougher sanctions on non-paying parents such as forcing the sale of property and taking away passports and driving licences through a quick and simple administrative process. The Child Support (Enforcement) Act was designed to see families being paid faster, as it gives the DWP the power to use a liability order to reclaim unpaid child maintenance instead of applying to court and waiting for up to 20 weeks. My goodness me! How frustrating to wait that long for something to be done.

I want to keep to my six minutes, Sir Charles, so these will be my last few sentences. The reform is great, but more is needed. I look to the Minister to see what improvements can be made throughout the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. I would appreciate hearing the Minister’s thoughts on discussions between the DWP and Northern Ireland to ensure that in a bitter breakdown, the child is not the one ultimately paying the price. That is what this debate is about, and that is what we should try to achieve.

[Sir Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

Thank you for your collegiate approach.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Sir Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

I will give Wendy Chamberlain two minutes in which to speak; she has been here from the start of the debate and has been trying to catch my eye.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Sir Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

Thank you very much. I now call Peter Grant. Mr Grant, you have 10 minutes in which to sum up for your party.

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[Peter Grant]

If the hon. Gentleman had listened to what I was saying, he would realise that that is exactly what I am not saying. I am saying that the full force of collection and enforcement that is in the hands of His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs or DWP should be brought to bear not only on those who refuse to pay what they are assessed as being due to pay, but on those who are lying, committing fraud and stealing from their own children. Ultimately, they would still be stealing from their own children, but HMRC has powers to enforce in a way that a single parent does not have. That is what I am saying. It is not a simple solution, but I think it would make a significant difference. As has been mentioned, the DWP’s own figures reckon that since the Child Maintenance Service was set up, £590 million of debt has not been collected. That does not include the undetected fraud or the under-declaration of income, assets and so on.

Something else that I always find concerning about the CMS is that it does not seem to have any curiosity about a parent who fights and fights to get a settlement but then just disappears off the system and gives up. In Child Maintenance Service cases I have dealt with, I have found that probably the single biggest outcome is that the parent with responsibility for bringing up the children simply gives up in frustration, deciding that it is better for them just to get on with their life and to struggle through—very often in or near poverty—because they can no longer cope with the stress of dealing with the Child Maintenance Service. That is a shocking indictment of any Government service, in particular one whose only point, whose only reason to exist, is to make lives better for vulnerable young children.

I have often noticed that, when speaking to parents, the paying partner always talks about how much they are having to pay to their ex-partner. They often do not see it as paying for the upkeep of their children. Something about the language we use here, we need to look at. Something raised by one of my constituents at a roundtable held by Fife Gingerbread, which I hope the Department has picked up and started to act on, is that CMS letters get addressed to the parent—the parent’s name is on it—and it does not say “To the parent of” with the name of the child, which would be a simple way of making it clear that this is about the children.

There will often be bad will between two partners who have split up. Whether they split up amicably or acrimoniously, once they start disagreeing about money, it is likely to become quite a bit more acrimonious. The children, however, should never be made to suffer as a result.

I mentioned Fife Gingerbread. I again need to commend the outstanding work that it has done, and not just within the boundaries of Fife. It is one of the organisations that has influenced the way in which the Child Maintenance Service now operates. On the scrapping of the £20 fee for being able to claim child maintenance, for example, I am convinced that Fife Gingerbread is one of the organisations that can claim part of the credit for having achieved that, as well as a number of other changes that we are seeing.

We have had reference to the fact that IT systems are not fit for purpose. This is the 21st century—we are almost a quarter of the way into the century—and we are using systems that are 40 or 50 years out of date. The Chair of the Select Committee, the right hon. Member for East Ham, and other members of the Work and Pensions Committee and of the Public Accounts Committee will remember only too well what happened to the payment of state pensions when the Department carried on using systems that were no longer fit for purpose. We could be heading for an equally massive injustice in the assessment, payment and collection of child maintenance if we do not get those systems sorted out. As the hon. Member for Amber Valley said, it should not take three or four months for somebody to be told why the assessment is the number that it is. In some of the queries to HMRC, when people are assessed on self-assessment, they could go online, and sitting in front of them would be exactly why HMRC had assessed them for that amount.

The final thing is that one way to reduce the need for child maintenance is for Governments to take other action on children in poverty. This Government could undertake actions that have already been shown to be successful by the Scottish Government. There is the child payment, which has lifted about 50,000 children in Scotland out of poverty; if we do that down here, we are talking about half a million children being lifted out of poverty. Actions taken by the Scottish Government are estimated to reduce the cost of bringing up a child by somewhere in the region of £25,000 to £26,000 during their childhood. Policies similar to those would reduce the demands on child maintenance, reducing the need either for children to live in poverty or for their parents to almost literally come to blows arguing over who should care for their child.

I entirely agree that nobody should feel that they can just leave their children to be the responsibility of someone else. I find it interesting that financial neglect, which is what we are talking about here, is treated differently from any other forms of neglect. If a parent neglects their child in any other way, we do not just stand back and leave the parents to sort it out. If a parent is deliberately neglecting their children financially, they cannot be allowed to get away with it. I do not have confidence that the existing Child Maintenance Service will ever be able to address that, which is why we need to design an entirely new service fit for the 21st century that recognises the wide variety of circumstances that people live in today.

[Sir Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

Thank you, Mr Grant. That was a perfect 10 minutes.

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[Dr Mullan]

There could be a change of Government by the end of the year. I welcome the warm words, and the hon. Member may go on to describe specific policy pledges, but I would like to hear specific policy goals that her party has in mind. For example, do you support the introduction of home curfews? Rather than just speaking warm words, what will you actually do differently should you end up in government?

[Sir Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

Order. Can we not use the word “you” in the Chamber when referring to another Member?

[Dr Mullan]

My apologies, Sir Charles.

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[Alison McGovern]

The hon. Gentleman may have said “could”, but I am not the Minister and I would not be so arrogant as to assume that that will be certain to happen. My aim was to leave space for questions to be directed to the Minister, to assist colleagues. I simply say this to the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Dr Mullan): I could point to the record over the past 14 years and the number of occasions when Labour spokespeople have called for the removal of the fee and stronger enforcement. Some of that, including on the issue of the fee, the Government have now done, which is good. However, as I have been saying, we all know that a range of improvements need to be made. I think that we would all find it helpful if the Government could undertake to regularly update us—through the Select Committee, if necessary—on what is happening.

As I was saying, and as we all know, the children’s needs must come first. Members have described the pain that parents experience in this system, which affects children very deeply. That is why this issue really matters to us all.

The second point that I think is uncontroversial is that the service also has to react to some complex realities of life, and one of those realities is the power dynamic in a relationship. Anyone can find themselves a victim of domestic abuse, but unfortunately, domestic abuse tends to work along the lines of the imbalance in power between men and women in our country. That then leads us to a heightened concern about how domestic abuse is handled within the system, and I hope that the service will hear that concern.

I want to end on a hopeful note, because although there has been deep dissatisfaction, I felt that in the Minister’s letter to me there were some signs that the civil service is working hard to improve the quality of the service for all parents. If we can do that early, we can avoid some of the deeply distressing situations that Members have described today.

[Sir Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

Thank you, shadow Minister. Minister, will you just leave a couple of minutes at the end for the mover of the motion?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Paul Maynard)]

Provided that you cough strategically, Sir Charles, because my eyesight—

[Sir Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

I will—I actually have a cold, so I will be coughing and sniffling throughout.

[Paul Maynard]

My eyesight cannot quite determine the numbers on the clock any more—such is my venerable age. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Charles. I thank the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms) and my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) for applying to the Backbench Business Committee to obtain this debate, and all hon. Members for their participation.

We have had a constructive, wide-ranging and, for my part, very interesting debate. We have discussed the original findings of the Select Committee report, which I very much enjoyed reading. Indeed, I always enjoy reading difficult, challenging reports when they are not in my brief, because I find them much more reassuring to read knowing that thinking is going on. We discussed the Government’s response at the time, the progress since that response, what is being done and how far that has got.

I will try to cover as many themes as have been raised today, but if I run out of time or there is insufficient detail, I will make sure that we write to all hon. Members. I know that Viscount Younger has already spoken to the right hon. Member for East Ham to have a further briefing. I am sure that all hon. Members here today will be interested in what Viscount Younger has to say, so I will try to ensure that all that information is properly communicated.

I do not normally do this, but I particularly thank the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) for speaking in such glowing terms about my letter to her. There were some helpful comments about the progress the Government have been making. That might give other hon. Members some optimism that things are moving in a more rapid direction than they might hitherto have realised.

The Child Maintenance Service makes a real difference to the life chances of many thousands of children. That is why we are reforming it for the long term on an ongoing basis to continually improve outcomes. The service plays a crucial role in securing financial support for children when parents have separated, mandating and, when necessary, enforcing arrangements so that money flows from paying parents to receiving parents, which can benefit children and help prevent them falling into poverty. Indeed, payments for both child maintenance and private arrangements delivered an estimated £2.6 billion annually to parents between 2020 and 2022, keeping around 160,000 children out of poverty.

The vast majority of parents strive each and every day to give their children the best possible start in life. Those who shirk the financial responsibilities they have for their children must be quickly held to account. That is why we continue to improve the Child Maintenance Service to ensure it works as effectively and efficiently as possible. However, it is currently still too easy for parents to avoid paying up if their income does not come through normal PAYE. That is why we are looking at changing the rules so that child maintenance calculations include a much broader range of earnings, such as property income.

We recognise that some parents will find it more difficult to afford their payments if they have built up substantial arrears. The Child Maintenance Service will continue to prioritise collection of ongoing maintenance, but we have committed to reviewing the calculation. We have begun the process of updating the underlying research to consider how we ensure the calculation reflects current and future societal trends. Any changes made to the child maintenance calculation will require amendments to both primary and secondary legislation. The calculation formula underpins every Child Maintenance Service case. Furthermore, those with private arrangements can also use the online calculator to get an estimate to inform their own arrangement, which is doubly crucial. It is essential, therefore, that we undertake a thorough and comprehensive review of the calculation formula and consider the potential impacts on all parents and children. That requires time to ensure we take an informed and co-ordinated approach, to ensure the calculation is fit for purpose and future-proofed.

Personal Independence Payment: Regulations

Charles Walker Excerpts

Wednesday 29th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman. He has made the position clear and he has done so very quickly, and the House will have noted that.

[Mr Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. May I apologise to you and the House for inadvertently misleading it during my Adjournment debate last Thursday on the Ratty’s Lane incinerator? I said that in 2012 Hertfordshire County Council objected to 46 of Veolia’s HGV movements a day, and that the company was now proposing 212 HGV movements a day. That figure was provided to me by Veolia on 4 March 2016, but I have since discovered that the actual number is 268 HGV movements a day. [Interruption.] Nothing Veolia tells me turns out to be the reality of the situation, but I owe it to this House to do my homework more thoroughly, so may I apologise to you again, Mr Speaker, for misleading this House and to my esteemed colleagues in this place, who indicate that they share my sense of outrage?

[Mr Speaker]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. He is certainly a witty wag. I would add that, as far as Veolia is concerned, the hon. Gentleman is a formidable foe. I rather imagine the company is discovering that now, if it did not know it before.

Backbench Business

Charles Walker Excerpts

Thursday 16th March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Louise Haigh]

That is another interesting point that shows the problems with using Google Maps without consulting the local authority or the local passenger transport executive, as any rational person would expect the Government to do. On average, the journey between Eastern Avenue and the city centre takes 44 minutes. The maximum time it took Antony was 63 minutes.

There is clear consensus today that the evidence base and the impact assessments need to be published before the final decision is made. I would really like the Minister to reflect today on the long-term impact of removing a respected community service from incredibly deprived areas—Arbourthorne and Manor Top are some of the most deprived in the country—that have relied on them for so long.

[Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

The three Front-Bench speakers need about eight minutes each, and I want to leave two minutes for the mover of the motion to wind up.

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[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

Absolutely. With the Castlemilk jobcentre, all the people who use it will effectively have to use what the Department calls the Newlands jobcentre—it is called that, but it is actually in Pollokshaws, which is even further away than Newlands. All the people from Castlemilk who have to use that jobcentre will have an 8-mile round trip to get there and back. At the minute, no matter where someone is in Castlemilk, they can walk to the jobcentre in, at the most, maybe seven minutes, and that is for a perfectly able-bodied person.

I do not see the need to put those kinds of barriers in people’s way for trying to access a service that has been in their community for a long, long time. The Department seems to think that people can get from Castlemilk to the jobcentre in Pollokshaws in under 30 minutes—I think that is what it has said. I say, “Well, good luck with that,” because, having gone around the constituency countless times over the years I have lived in Glasgow, which is my entire adult life, I certainly have never been able to make that journey in just over 20 minutes.

However, I will come to my final point, which is on the consultation. We had to drag the Government to publish their consultation on the Glasgow jobcentres online; they had no intention of doing that. [Interruption.] The Minister can shake his head or gesticulate in any way he wants, but they had no intention of putting that on the Department for Work and Pensions website. It was welcome that they did, and it was also welcome that they extended the consultation for around two weeks. I am not sure what the Minister is so flabbergasted by, but I look forward to hearing about it none the less.

It was quite remiss of the Government not to take the time to write to every single person who would have been affected by these closures. When someone goes to the jobcentre to register, there is not a bit of information that the staff do not get from them, so the Government could have made it easy for those for whom this closure would be a big issue to take part in the consultation. Rather than just having fliers and putting up a couple of posters in jobcentres, the Government could have sent a consultation response form directly to their houses, or by email, rather than relying on Members of Parliament or members of the public—I had several people willing to do this, even though they were not exactly happy about it—standing outside jobcentres and informing people that they were going to close, which was the first time they had heard about it. In my view, it was quite wrong of Ministers not to inform MPs about this matter and for us to have to read about it in the press, but that is nothing in comparison with members of the public who use the jobcentres finding out from a stranger in the street campaigning outside a jobcentre.

The Government have handled the consultation poorly; however, I would like to hear what the responses to the consultation contain. I would also like to hear how many responses there have been and to know when the announcement on closures will be made. My understanding is that we can expect an announcement towards the end of March—that is, around about the time that article 50 is in full-blown scale, so it will perhaps be a good time to bury bad news.

Nevertheless, I ask the Minister this quite sincerely: can he commit to making an oral statement on the Floor of the House and to not sneaking this news out in a written statement, a press release, or in some fashion that avoids proper parliamentary scrutiny? If he gives me nothing else today—U-turns are quite fashionable this week, but I am not sure he will do another—I ask him to commit at the very least to making a full oral statement on the Floor of the House, so that Members can scrutinise the decision further.

[Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

I am going to call the Minister no later than 4.18 pm. If the Opposition Front Benchers want me to call him earlier than that—he has got lots of notes—that is entirely up to them.

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[Margaret Greenwood]

I thank the hon. Lady for that; she makes a good point.

Eligibility for the Work and Health programme will be much more restricted than the programmes it replaces. It will be open to certain disabled people and to people who have been unemployed for two years or more. In the light of that, the Employment Related Services Association estimates that as many as 45,000 fewer disabled people will have access to specialist employment support in every remaining year of this Parliament. Employment support for almost everyone else will be provided by Jobcentre Plus, including many disabled people with specialist needs.

How does the programme of jobcentre closures square with the Government’s aim of meeting their manifesto commitment of halving the disability employment gap? The longer and more complicated journeys to jobcentres as a result of the closures will particularly affect disabled people and people with caring responsibilities. Why has the DWP not yet published an equality impact assessment to analyse the effect of the closures on claimants and the local community?

More difficult journeys also increase the risk of claimants being sanctioned by staff for being late for or missing appointments. Will DWP issue guidance that, when considering sanctions, jobcentres should take account of increased journey times due to closures? There is already a backlog of sanctions, which in some cases is leading to money being withdrawn from claimants months after non-compliance, even though claimants may in the meantime have done what they were asked to do.

The roll-out of universal credit is continuing and will also present additional challenges for Jobcentre Plus. Jobcentres are having to do a huge range of things: provide careers advice to schools; deliver the new youth obligation under universal credit, which involves much more intensive support for 18 to 21-year-olds for the first six months of their claim; assess the viability of businesses for self-employed people claiming universal credit; and extend services to the partners of jobseekers, because universal credit applies to a household, so for the first time a spouse or partner of a claimant can be asked to attend a jobcentre to discuss work, even if they themselves have not made a claim or are in work. In future, jobcentres will also have to operate in-work conditionality under universal credit. In other words, people on low incomes who are working will be required to increase their earnings or risk being sanctioned—another first.

There is growing evidence that the supposed six-week wait for payment at the start of a universal credit claim is much longer in some areas, leading to people being in arrears with their rent and building up debts. Will the Minister assure us that the DWP has fully taken into account the need to tackle existing delays in processing claims in its plans for closures? Furthermore, universal credit is being rolled out at a rate of five jobcentres per month, rising to 30 jobcentres per month from July and 50 jobcentres after September, but by the end of last year the Department was ready to announce a dramatic programme of closures at the very time it was going to speed up the roll-out of universal credit.

Universal credit is, of course, designed for claims to be made and managed online. The Minister, in his statement of 26 January, highlighted that

“99.6% of applicants for Universal Credit full service submitted their claim online.”

As has been said by many Members, however, not everyone is confident of using IT, and many people rely on access to a computer in local libraries to do so—and libraries, too, are under threat from the cuts to local authority funding, with which we are all so familiar.

Just because a claim is made online does not mean that it can then be completely managed online. When there is a problem, a claimant may have little choice but to ring the DWP helpline or to go to a jobcentre to resolve it. We know from parliamentary questions last year that many claimants are spending long periods on the phone to DWP’s universal credit helpline.

The DWP is not alone in closing offices. HMRC is also planning to close all its 170 offices nationwide by 2020, replacing them with only 13 regional centres. Employment support works best when people have a good relationship with their adviser or work coach and it is tailored to a claimant’s specific needs. I am concerned that the system is already buckling under increasing pressure and that, in closing so many jobcentres at the same time as speeding up the roll-out of universal credit, the Government are simply asking the impossible of work coaches, who are at the heart of our system of employment support.

It is vital that we have a reliable social security system that is there for any one of us should we fall on hard times. Those closures look set to erode the infrastructure in place to deliver that system without the Government’s even having made an equality impact assessment. I urge the Government to think again.

[Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

Before I call the Minister, I remind him that we would like Mr Stephens to have two minutes at the end. Would the Minister mind sitting down by 4.28 pm?

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[Chris Stephens]

May I first apologise to you Mr Walker? So keen was I to raise this issue that I forgot to refer the House to the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and my position as chair of the PCS parliamentary group. I apologise for that.

A number of issues have not yet been answered. There is the question of the review criteria. I am clear, as are many hon. Members, that all 78 sites that were earmarked for closure should have been subjected to a full public consultation. The reason why is that the equality impact issue is still outstanding; there is no equality impact assessment for disabled people or the black and minority ethnic community, among others. The economic impact will certainly be hard on many areas; the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock) identified that, and made an excellent point on industrial injury benefit. There is also the workforce impact; we have a written answer that says that the DWP expects 750 staff posts to go. If it is hiring staff and letting 750 posts go, I suspect that there will be an employment tribunal at some stage.

We need to make sure that this is done with the correct information, and not wrong and inaccurate information. I ask the Minister to listen to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South (Stewart Malcolm McDonald) about parliamentary scrutiny going forward, and to make sure that we deal with this issue on the Floor of the House. Certainly, if the Minister makes announcements, we expect that to be on the Floor of the House and not sneaked through in a written statement on a Thursday or Friday, or before a recess.

I thank you, Mr Walker, and thank all hon. Members for taking part in this important debate.

[Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

Thank you, colleagues. I hope you all have a productive Friday and weekend.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered Jobcentre Plus office closures.

Mental Health and Unemployment

Charles Walker Excerpts

Tuesday 24th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this important debate.

Mental health in the workplace is undoubtedly hugely important, but mental health is a continuum throughout life. It starts in the earliest years when it is a matter of the relationship between a baby and their mother and father. If we can improve those early years, we improve children’s chances of having good mental health throughout their lives.

Mental health is about resilience and building resilience. I am sure that you, Madam Deputy Speaker, will be concerned, as I am, that headmasters in primary and secondary schools now talk about the levels of self-harm in their schools. It is extraordinarily worrying that young children at primary and secondary school are self-harming. They feel so desperate, so out of control, so out of touch, perhaps, with their peers, that the only way they can relieve that pressure is through harming themselves, through cutting themselves. Of course, mental illness manifests itself in other ways, such as depression and a feeling of isolation.

If we are to enable workplaces to flourish, we need to ensure that our young people can flourish. I urge the Government, in looking at the mental health piece, to see it as a joined-up continuum. Without good mental health in the early years and in schools, we will not have good mental health in the workplace, despite the best efforts of employers.

The truth is, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Burstow) and my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) have identified, the longer one is out of work, the less chance there is of rejoining work. A couple of years ago, President Obama’s mental health adviser came to speak in the United Kingdom, and a huge amount of work has been done in the United States about exclusion from the workplace. It is simply the case that if people have a mental health crisis at work and leave that workplace for even a short period, their chances of returning are diminished, and the longer they are away, the less chance they have of getting back into any form of work. We need to be mindful of that. I congratulate the Minister for recognising that. I know that he is doing some important thinking in this area. An article yesterday in the Evening Standard described the efforts, led by the Minister, to ensure that people who have been out of work for a long period have the pathways back into work.

Why is work important? It is important because a lot of the time it is fun. It is not fun all of the time; nothing is fun all of the time. But a lot of the time work is fun. It is challenging. It is where we socialise. It is where we meet and make friends. It is where we become part of a team. It is where we achieve. It is where we have success. It is sad to think that there are people who have mental health problems—a period of mental unwellness—who are excluded from this environment, from all those successes, all the things that we enjoy and, on occasions, take for granted.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Durham—I call him my hon. Friend because I have known him for so many years and we have talked about this on so many occasions that it would be churlish to call him anything but my hon. Friend—made a very insightful and incisive point: what does success look like? Success will not always be going straight into a full-time job. Actually, success might be never going back into a full-time job. Success for one individual might be leaving their home and going out to do some voluntary work for the third sector, perhaps starting off by working one or two days every couple of weeks, moving to one day a week, and then to three or four days a week. It means engaging with the community, being part of a team and being valued and appreciated as an individual. I hope that the option of progressing back into full-time work will be available to all people, but let us not set that as the only benchmark, because for some it will be unobtainable. We need to ensure that there is a way back to some form of engagement in the workplace that meets the spiritual and emotional needs of people recovering from a mental health setback.

A number of colleagues have rightly focused on the efforts of British Telecom, and I would also like to mention Legal & General. They recognise that mental health impacts on all their performers, including their high performers. A good employer should not want to lose anyone for the wrong reasons, but they certainly do not want to lose their best and most productive employees. I do not think that there is anything wrong with British Telecom making a commercial decision that it is in its interests to ensure that it supports its work force. Indeed, it is to be applauded for doing so.

As my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham and my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam observed, where are the other employers? We know that they are out there, because it cannot just be two—BT and Legal & General. They need to make some noise. We do not want them to be shy. We want them to stand up, shoulder to shoulder, and say, “This is important to us.” If more companies said that, others would want to stand up and say it too, and then we will get a movement going—we like nothing more in this place than getting a movement going. We will have many voices saying in unison, “This is important to us.” Those voices might employ just a few people locally, but they employ up to tens of thousands nationally.

As has already been observed, we cannot separate mental well-being from physical well-being. Many employers now have company gyms and all sorts of schemes to get their employees fit and healthy physically, but mental well-being is just as important—perhaps even more so—and that is where more focus and emphasis is needed.

We must also ensure that people who are going through a period of difficulty and turmoil have good coping mechanisms and strategies. Again, the employer can be at the forefront of that. It is not always the case, but too often people who are struggling can find that their coping mechanisms revolve around substance abuse and misuse, and that is in no one’s interests—not the employee’s, not their family’s and not their employer’s. We need employers to be at the forefront by not only looking at their staff’s physical health, but placing a huge premium and emphasis on their mental well-being.

[Paul Burstow]

My hon. Friend is making some incredibly important points. What does he think about a possible requirement—voluntary or otherwise—on companies to report on their human capital, because it is an important risk factor for investors if companies do not properly look after their staff and have higher turnover rates as a result? I wonder whether that might push employers to focus on these matters more.

[Mr Walker]

My right hon. Friend makes a very good point, and I will conclude my speech by answering it. Most companies like to talk about the importance they place on human capital, but I suspect that very few do it very well. That is why I think it is so important for good employers to stand up and say, “This is what we are doing and it can be audited, so you can prove for yourselves that we are doing what it says on the tin.” I am not into naming and shaming companies, or coercion—that is the wrong way to go—but there has to be a premium and a reward placed on good practice. I join my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham in saying to Government that we need to give that some thought. We do not want to come up with a stick; we want to come up with carrots so that good employers are celebrated, and celebrated loudly.

Employment and Support Allowance and Work Capability Assessments

Charles Walker Excerpts

Thursday 5th February 2015 Westminster Hall

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

Order. I hope to call the shadow Minister at six minutes past 4, to give the two Front Benchers 11 minutes each to speak and Dame Anne two minutes to wind up.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker. I am grateful to all the members of the Work and Pensions Committee, who have done a great deal of work over the past months and years on this issue. I want to look first at a couple of slightly more detailed aspects of this matter that were not fully covered—no one can cover all of it—in the introductory remarks.

The first is mandatory reconsideration, whereby someone who has had a decision that they wish to dispute goes through a stage in which the decision will be reconsidered. People now have to go through that step before they can go to a formal appeal. The Committee recommended that claimants who had been deemed fit for work following the process, and who have requested a reconsideration, should continue to be paid ESA at the assessment rate until they receive the reconsideration decision.

That issue has been raised repeatedly, not just in the Committee’s report, but on a number of other occasions, but it has been repeatedly rejected by the Minister and his predecessors on the ground that it would be wrong to pay ESA when the claimant has been found fit for work. Ministers say that there is no legal basis for making such payments. However, if the claimant is still found fit for work after reconsideration and subsequently appeals, ESA is reinstated at that point while awaiting appeal, which could be some months, not just weeks, and it can be backdated.

In December 2014, the DWP published statistics on mandatory reconsideration, stating that of the 177,000 ESA mandatory reconsideration decisions made between October 2013 and October 2014, 75% were cleared within 30 days, which still leaves a quarter—some 44,000 individuals—taking more than 30 days. I would argue that that increases the need for allowing ESA to run on, rather than decreases it. If reconsideration for 75% of the people involved is over inside a month, why go through a process of applying for a different benefit, with a different conditionality, and then have to go back to the previous benefit, for such a short period of time? The payment made is exactly the same—the ESA assessment rate is the same as JSA, so there is no difference in the amount of money people would be given.

However, there is a cost of administering a new application, and then presumably moving it back again. Citizens Advice has calculated that the cost of doing that is £160 per claimant and that if all claimants took up a JSA claim at that point, it could cost around £30 million in administration costs in a year. That just seems to be a pointless activity, which leaves some people who do not make the claim for JSA without income at all during that period. If they apply for JSA, they may find themselves subject to conditionality, stress and upset, all for a cost—not a saving—to the DWP; that does seem strange indeed. If there is a legal reason why this cannot be done, it is not beyond the bounds of imagination for Government lawyers to resolve the matter fairly quickly, presumably through regulation.

Another issue that remains missing from the published statistics on reconsideration is outcomes. What has been the outcome of the mandatory reconsideration process? How many of the requests for reconsideration result in a decision being overturned? How many mandatory reconsideration requests that are not overturned go on to an appeal being launched? At the moment, we still do not know.

I raised that issue with the previous Minister and the Office for National Statistics last year. Before reconsideration became mandatory, there were far fewer reconsiderations, but one way of judging the performance of the assessors and the decision makers, and the efficacy of the whole process of the WCA, is in part—and I accept that this is only in part—by the proportion of successful appeals. If any organisation receives a large number of appeals that are then successful, it will want to look at its processes and say, “Why has that happened? Perhaps we are doing something wrong and could do it better, so people would not have to go through that.” It is therefore important to know what is happening in the process.

At the moment, in the published statistics, when a decision is overturned at the reconsideration stage, it is counted in with the original decisions. Given the large number of mandatory reconsiderations, I would argue that it is very important to separate out the outcomes at each stage; there are the original decisions, the decisions after mandatory reconsideration, and the decisions after appeal. That is particularly pertinent given the advent of a new company carrying out assessments, because it will be one method—I appreciate that it will not be the only method—of judging the ongoing performance of the new provider. Will the Minister confirm when those statistics on reconsideration will start to be published, so that we can see what is happening in that respect?

I also want to raise the issue of reassessment. There has been a temporary stop on routine reassessments, not as a managed decision because of concern about reassessments, but because of the backlog. Therefore, in response to a backlog that has built up considerably over the last couple of years, the decision was taken to suspend most routine reassessments. That must be a great relief to a lot of people who were being called in at yearly intervals for reassessment, but it is not a considered approach to the question of reconsideration. The temporary halt, however, gives us an opportunity to look at the purpose and practice of reassessment and decide how we want to handle it better.

The Government frequently refer to the previous incapacity benefit as leaving people languishing on benefit. I have always argued that that was an exaggeration. The many IB claimants who went through reassessment prior to 2008 and the new system coming in would have been surprised to hear that there was no reassessment, because they certainly experienced it. Further, this is a time when we have to look at the outcomes of the migration process from incapacity benefit. Far higher numbers of people have been found unfit for work and been placed in the support group through the migration process than was originally predicted. We might therefore want to ask whether actually, people are genuinely far less fit than might have been assumed. On that basis, why does one have to go through very frequent reassessments that will not prove anything different from what has happened before?

Over-frequent reassessment is stressful for applicants. People describe being really worried when the brown envelope comes through the door with yet another form to fill in to go through the whole process again. It is also expensive, time-consuming, and, I would argue, partly why we got into having the backlog in the first place.

The last independent review from Litchfield recommended, specifically for people suffering a severe incapacity from degenerative brain disorder and who were in the support group, that the reassessment period should be extended to five years. The recommendation was accepted by the Government, but so far, there has been little sign of progress on when that will happen, who it will cover and how many people it is likely to have an impact on. The Committee report, however, asked for the matter to be dealt with without further delay—I would like to hear from the Minister whether that will happen or whether it will just drift on for a long time—and for ways of looking at wider aspects of the reassessment criteria to be considered. As we are moving to a new provider and a new contract, the Committee felt that this was an appropriate time to allow the new contractor to plan its ongoing work. Surely a provider that is trying to allocate its staff and its time wants to know how many reassessments it will be required to do. If the view is that we can push back a bit on that, we need to know at this stage.

One aspect of the system that the Government clearly do not want to get into now—perhaps it will have to be for another Parliament—is whether the test is doing what it should, or whether it is still trying to do two, in a sense, contradictory things. The Chair of the Select Committee went into that to a degree. It is a test for eligibility for benefit that is supposed to determine how close people are to employment and what help and support they might get. However, as it is, those two factors do not seem to get the fullest possible exploration. If people are to be able to make a journey towards employment, their circumstances need to be looked at.

The extent of the challenge people face was illustrated well by the expert panel who looked at WCA as part of a process on whether new descriptors and ways to test people would be appropriate. It looked at the outcomes of some such tests and said clearly that while there was agreement with a fit for work finding, many people who were found fit for work needed a great deal of support before they could find work and 25% would require a support worker to engage in work. If such people have been found fit for work, we must ask what the situation is for the people in the work-related activity group who are supposedly nearer to employment but likely to have greater need of support, adaptations and help to get into employment.

From all the work done on employment of people with disabilities and long-term conditions, we know that a great deal needs to be done with employers; that is a huge part of the process. Indeed, the Select Committee has looked at the whole spectrum. We also looked recently at access to work, because that is a means by which to help people to get into employment. We must look at the process as a whole.

I am concerned that the Government, in their response to the Select Committee’s report, said that they will not take up the recommendation of a fundamental review of WCA or even many of the specific recommendations. It is not only that: the whole of the introduction to the response seems to be more focused on reducing the numbers on benefits than on improving the process and outcomes. Many have been saying this for some considerable time, but it has obviously now dawned on the DWP that the number of people receiving benefit has not reduced as much as had been anticipated, given how many people have been found fit for work. According to the Minister’s own figures, which were given to the Select Committee, slightly under 100,000 fewer people are receiving ESA or IB than were receiving the comparator benefits in 2008. We have been through an expensive, stressful and upsetting process—worse than that for many people—and the outcome has been a reduction in claimants of less than 100,000 at a time when, compared with 2008, the labour market is picking up, so one might expect some people to be going back to employment in any event.

There are two ways to look at that. One is to say, “Maybe people are genuinely sicker or less able than we thought, so what do we do about that?” The other way is to say, “Oh, it has been made too easy for people to reapply, so we will try to make that harder.” I was struck that the introduction to the Government’s response to our report said that the DWP will make it harder for people who want to reapply for ESA for a second or subsequent time to receive that benefit—they should stay on JSA until their claim had been looked at.

There is also a suggestion about introducing the claimant commitment for ESA claimants. The words used here are interesting. It says claimants should be helped in

“their work related requirements including, where appropriate, proactive work search that treats looking for work as a full-time outcome”.

While modified slightly by “where appropriate”, that sounds similar to the claimant commitment that JSA claimants have to go through: for them, job search is a full-time job. Apparently, the DWP is now suggesting that that should be applied to people in the work-related activity group of ESA.

I accept that the words suggest that that should take place where appropriate, but why pick out full-time job search as the one example of what might be in a claimant commitment? If people need help with adaptations, being introduced to employers and sometimes with reskilling, depending on the nature of their previous work—for some, their health means that they cannot do the type of job they did previously—an appropriate claimant commitment, if there must be one, should cover that and not be about endless job search. All too often, when constituents describe what happens when, as ESA claimants, they go into the Work programme, they say that they feel what they are given in the way of help, if anything at all, is endless job searching, as if that will suddenly overcome their problems. I do not believe that it will.

There are people on ESA whose jobs are being held open for them, but they have to claim because they are still too sick to work and their statutory sick pay has run out. I met a constituent in that position last week and she could see little point in being put through lots of job searches when she was confident that she could return to her employment when she was fit. In the meantime, she was unclear why she should be expected to go to constant interviews with an underlying threat that she might lose her benefit. Are we really saying that people who, by definition, have been judged as unfit for work are to be treated in the same was as JSA claimants?

If the Department is keen to introduce some sort of commitment, that must be sensitive to the needs of that group. It must look at their distance from employment and obstacles that they may face. The Department should also look at the vast experience of specialist organisations in the field who have done excellent work with people with all sorts of health conditions and disabilities and helped them into work. That also needs to be done in a positive way, because the last thing we need is for people yet again to get the impression that the emphasis is, “You are not trying hard enough in some way, so we will make you try harder. If you are not trying hard enough, you aren’t really entitled to benefit.” That is the kind of message that is coming across.

If we really believe that the best thing we can do is help people back into employment in a positive manner, we need to put in all those support mechanisms sensitively. People will respond to that, as they do to many of the specialist providers. I hope that the Minister will tell us why the Government’s response focused so much on those aspects.

[Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

May I rely on Front-Bench Members to split the remaining time equally between them? Thank you.

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

Charles Walker Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that this debate is about the Minister’s bedroom tax, which disproportionately affects disabled people and their families, with two thirds of those who are hit being disabled people, their families and their carers. It is about the chaos of the personal independence payment, which is leaving thousands of people without essential support. It is about Ministers’ handling of the work capability assessment and the abject failure of their policies to support many disabled people into work, and it is about the collapse in social care and the services that support people to live the lives that they want. My hon. Friend is right that what this afternoon’s debate is truly about is putting the policies that Lord Freud and his colleagues have been pursuing under the microscope, and understanding what has gone wrong.

[Mr Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)]

In this place I have campaigned on mental health with people from all parts of the Chamber, including some fabulous people from the Opposition. The one thing that I have learned is that people make mistakes. Sometimes people get it wrong, like Lord Freud did, but they apologise and are allowed to move on. Please will the hon. Lady find some compassion for people who make mistakes and apologise? He is not a bad man.

[Kate Green]

I have known Lord Freud for a number of years and I agree that, personally, he is courteous and caring. However, his remark touched a deep nerve for disabled people and we have to understand why. It is because it came in the context of the Government’s policies and the effects that disabled people are experiencing.

Work Programme

Charles Walker Excerpts

Thursday 10th October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Timms]

The numbers I have are slightly different, but we can look up the figures. Certainly, 50,000 people spending two years going back to the jobcentre is a disappointing start, but I hope that we will see better figures in future.

I was struck forcefully by something that the Chancellor of the Exchequer said in his spending review statement about the task facing the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. He said:

“That will require a difficult drive for efficiency, and a hard-headed assessment of underperforming programmes.”—[Official Report, 26 June 2013; Vol. 565, c. 314.]

The Select Committee is right to address key issues underpinning the underperformance of the Work programme identified by the Chancellor. The Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion has been commissioned to carry out the official evaluation of the Work programme, and I think that it will produce an interesting piece of work. In its analysis of the 26 September on the most recent performance data, it points out that two years in, the Work programme is not performing as well as the flexible new deal. The percentage of those over 25 entering the programme who secured a job in two years is 35%; it was 38.9% under the flexible new deal. The Minister’s predecessor but two used to castigate the flexible new deal. It turns out, according to CESI observations, that it was better than the current programme.

One thing that would help, and that the Minister could do quickly, would be to lift the ban on providers publishing data about what is going on in their areas. The ban was introduced—let us be frank—to safeguard the career prospects of the then Minister who introduced it, to whom I recall that the present Minister was Parliamentary Private Secretary, and in that it was successful. The right hon. Gentleman was promoted to his current post in September 2012 and a few weeks later we saw the first Work programme performance data, by which time he was safely off the scene. The ban means that information about what works well has been disseminated much too slowly and the underperformance that concerns the Chancellor, and I suspect all of us, would have been less if providers had been free to publish their performance data, as they were in the past.

The Government’s “Open Public Services” White Paper says:

“To make informed choices and hold services to account people need good information, so we will ensure that key data about public services, user satisfaction and the performance of all providers from all sectors is in the public domain”.

Actually, we had a complete ban on any data at all for the first 18 months of the Work programme. There are still no data, as the Select Committee has pointed out, about subcontractor performance. The “Open Public Services” White Paper, published by the Cabinet Office, uses the phrase

“all providers from all sectors”,

but we have still had nothing at all from the subcontractors. From that quote, I want to pick up the point about user satisfaction, which the Select Committee report also mentions. The Select Committee called, quite rightly, for regular surveys of user satisfaction on the Work programme, which would be valuable information. The “Open Public Services” White Paper had an effusive foreword written by the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister, in which they signed up to its goals. We should understand the user experience on the Work programme. The Government’s response to that recommendation is simply to tell us that there will be a couple of surveys of people who have been on the Work programme. That is not what the White Paper stated was going to happen. There should be much more information about what people are experiencing. The fact that there is not is one of the reasons for the underperformance that the Chancellor has pointed out.

The hon. Member for Eastbourne was absolutely right to highlight concerns about the performance of the Work programme for people on employment and support allowance. The Work programme invitation to tender stated that if nothing was done, 15% of those people would find a sustained job outcome within two years. The minimum performance standard was set at 10% above that, which is 16.5%. Paragraph 3.18 of the invitation to tender states:

“DWP expects that Providers will significantly exceed these minimum levels.”

They have actually achieved, as the hon. Gentleman stated, 5.8%. The Royal National Institute of Blind People tells me that 690 people with sight impairments were referred to the Work programme in its first 22 months, and 20 of them got sustained job outcomes. St Mungo’s has sent us a briefing for the debate, which tells us that 54% of homeless people surveyed for St Mungo’s, Crisis and Homeless Link reported seeing their Work programme adviser once a month or less frequently. It is not surprising, therefore, that very few of those who face serious hurdles—people with health problems and people who are homeless—have got into work.

I was in Australia last week, where I talked to people about those issues. There are quite a few providers that operate both in Australia and in the UK, and they said that the Work programme model was wrong and that “creaming and parking” was endemic; the hon. Member for Eastbourne has touched on that. I agree with the Select Committee that specialist voluntary sector providers have not been used enough. They have been squeezed out. In Australia, I was told that 50% of provision is from the voluntary sector, and I think in the Work programme it is about 20% and going down. As others have said in this debate, some good resources are not being utilised. St Mungo’s is a very good example. It had a contract with several prime providers in London, which was signed when the Work programme started in June 2011. By April 2012 it had not had a single referral, and it had to pull out and give up.

I agree with the suggestion that we should have a proper jobseeker classification model, which we do not have at the moment. There are many things that should be said, but I will conclude with this. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is right: the programme is underperforming. The Minister, who I welcome once again to her new role, has the opportunity to address that underperformance. Some of it can be addressed quite quickly, and the Select Committee report can be a real help. I wish the Minister well in her new role and I look forward to her reply.

[Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

The Minister may now speak, but I will call Dame Anne Begg at 4.28 pm on the nose.

Atos Work Capability Assessments

Charles Walker Excerpts

Thursday 17th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Lefroy]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right.

Thirdly, there is a category of people who are being considered fit for work although they have had, for instance, a severe stroke or are awaiting a back operation. One constituent was told that if people could move an empty cardboard box, they could go to work. Do the health care professionals employed by Atos always take account of the fact that people have to get to work in the first place, or that, while they may be able to perform an action once, they may not be able to perform it repeatedly when it causes severe pain?

[Mr Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend share my fear that the reputation of Atos may be so damaged that it can never really be effective? Perhaps the time has been reached when we need to park Atos and move on in a different direction.

[Jeremy Lefroy]

The Minister has definitely heard what my hon. Friend has said. I would only add that even if that is not the case, Atos is in the last chance saloon.

Fourthly, as the right hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton pointed out in his excellent opening speech, there are people whose conditions fluctuate. They may be all right on one day, but completely incapable on the next. At least two of my constituents have made that point.

Fifthly, there is the disregarding of expert medical opinion. I understand that there are marginal cases, but I have seen cases—as, I am sure, have all Members—that bear absolutely no relation to the WCA reports. Because I always make a point of visiting constituents at home if they have a problem with Atos, I see for myself that in some cases the reports bear no relation to the reality. I believe that appeal tribunals that overturn such reports should highlight blatant instances of that, because it clearly constitutes a misuse of public money when the reports are written so badly.

Finally, there are people who are not considered fit for work—for instance, those who are awaiting operations with no idea of the time scale—and who are put into the work-related activity group although they cannot work. That strikes me as a contradiction in terms.

Ford UK (Duty of Care to Visteon Pensioners)

Charles Walker Excerpts

Tuesday 4th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mike Freer]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. Anyone who has gone through the documents that the Visteon pensioners have been able to secure will see that there is a clear audit trail showing that Ford knew exactly what it was doing. It gave guarantees that it is now seeking to renege on.

[Mr Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)]

Is it not the case that in our pursuit of this matter, along with my hon. Friend the Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe), Ford has sent some very reasonable people to meet us, but it continues to behave in a very unreasonable way?

[Mike Freer]

My hon. Friend makes another good point. We have seen over the years that when companies are seeking to renege on their pension responsibilities, they seek to delay through the courts. I suspect that many companies hope that the pensioners will die before the case is heard, and I agree that it is time that Ford met its responsibilities.

I return to the issue of Visteon being set up to fail. The Visteon UK pension plan was created 12 months after the spin-off from Ford, with a transfer value of just £230 million. That transfer value left an immediate deficit of £49 million. That deficit was not communicated to the employees. It looks as though Ford was simply shunting off its liabilities and cleaning up its main balance sheet. It could be argued that a viable spin-off company could have traded its way out, and that it could have made employee and employer contributions to rectify the deficit. Could Visteon have traded its pension fund out of trouble? Possibly—I am not an actuary, so I cannot comment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Freer]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point, but it is worse than just that there was no engagement. All the evidence suggests that Ford Motor Company was engaged in underhand sourcing of new products from other suppliers at cheaper rates. Indeed, those new suppliers were asked—nay, forced—to sign confidentiality agreements. Therefore, although Ford knew that Visteon was not in a position to develop new products, it was actively sourcing new products from other, cheaper suppliers without telling Visteon or certainly without telling the work force of Visteon. I think that that is duplicitous. Visteon was immediately at a competitive disadvantage compared with other suppliers, not least in relation to securing new business from Ford. Of course, as it was a spin-off, one hope would have been that it would secure new business, but having inherited the overhead of the Ford system, it was unable to do so. As the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) pointed out, Visteon’s trading losses were close to $1 billion before it went into administration in March 2009. It made a loss every single year.

The key issue is this: did Ford know what it was doing? This is where I want to refer to a comment made by Tim Leuliette, the chief executive of Visteon Corporation. He was interviewed by the Detroit Free Press in November 2012. He was asked:

“Did…Visteon…have a chance”

when it was spun off? He said quite clearly:

“No…The labor cost issues, and the burden and the overhead was…so out of line with reality that it was almost comical. It just wasn’t going to work. And it didn’t work.”

If the chief executive of Visteon knew that its business plan could not recover the company, I doubt that Ford did not know that as well.

[Mr Charles Walker]

Is this not an example of Ford, a four-letter company, behaving in a four-letter way, and is it not a disgrace?

[Mike Freer]

My hon. Friend is tempting me into unparliamentary language. I will resist the temptation, but I of course do share the sentiment behind his intervention.

I think that the chief executive summed the position up in one or two sentences. I cannot believe that Ford Motor Company and the management of Visteon did not know exactly what they were doing. It was simply a dumping-of-liabilities exercise.

In April 2009, matters got worse. The Visteon UK pension fund required support from the Pension Protection Fund. Some Visteon pensioners have already seen their pensions reduced by 45%. In February 2012, the protection fund took on the responsibility for paying members of the scheme. As I have already said, it seems that Ford was simply cleaning house—shunting off a loss-making division and its pension liabilities. The new business was not viable, and it knew that the pension fund was in deficit. The full facts and the full risks were hidden from the employees. What was worse in my view was that false promises were made to encourage employees to transfer their pensions.

I used to work for one of the high street banks, in the regulated side of the bank. In fact, I sold pensions. If I had made to my customers the comments that Ford Motor Company made, I would not only have been struck off as a regulated person by the Financial Services Authority, I suspect that I would have been prosecuted for mis-selling.