Universal Credit

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Wednesday 9th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Employment Minister if she will make a statement on whether the Department for Work and Pensions’ business case for the implementation of universal credit has been approved by the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

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

In answering, let me lay out a couple of quick facts about where we are and then deal with the hon. Gentleman’s direct question.

Universal credit is a major reform that will transform the welfare state in Britain for the better, making 3 million people better off and bringing £35 billion of economic benefits to society. Rightly for a programme of this scale, the Government’s priority has been, and continues to be, its safe and secure delivery. This is demonstrated through our approach to date, which started with the successful launch of the pathfinder in April 2013 and has continued with the controlled expansion of universal credit.

On 5 December last year, I announced that universal credit would be rolled out to the north-west and expanded to couples from the summer of 2014, and would then expand to families later that year. That is exactly what is happening. A fortnight ago, we began our north-west expansion. Universal credit is now in 24 jobcentres and will reach 90 across the country by the end of the year. A week ago, we started taking claims from couples. This careful roll-out is allowing us, as we said we would, to learn as we go along, continuously improving the process—unlike so many of the programmes the previous Government instigated which crashed and burned.

In answer to the question, my Department has always worked, and will continue to work, closely with the Treasury on these roll-out plans. As we have made clear in a number of recent debates and answers to parliamentary questions, the Treasury has approved funding for the universal credit programme in 2013-14 and 2014-15, in line with the plan that I announced in December last year. These approvals are given by the Chief Secretary to the Treasury—such matters are delegated to him by the Chancellor—and are subject to rigorous controls, in line with the recommendations made last year by the National Audit Office.

It has always been the plan, as I set out last year, to secure agreement for universal credit in carefully controlled stages: first for singles, where we have agreed funding with the Treasury and are already rolling out in line with that agreement; then for couples, where we have agreed funding with the Treasury and are already rolling out in line with that agreement; and then for families, where we have recently secured agreement from the Treasury and will begin roll-out later this year. All this was confirmed by the Financial Secretary to the Treasury in an answer to a parliamentary question yesterday. That set of agreements confirms the approval of the strategic outline business case plans for this Parliament.

The final stage in this process, for which the logical point is now, has always been to approve and sign off the full business case covering the full, long lifetime of this programme, beyond this Parliament. We are in discussions over that, and it will eventually bring £35 billion of economic benefits to society. My right hon. Friend and I will, I am certain, approve that very soon.

[Chris Bryant]

That was a spectacular instance, as Sir Bob Kerslake might put it, of “beating about the bush”. It is a very simple question, to which the answer can only be yes or no: has the Department for Work and Pensions business case for the implementation of universal credit been approved by the Chancellor of the Exchequer? It is depressing that this Tory Minister and the Tory Prime Minister cannot tell the difference between an annual budget and a business case. It is pretty straightforward.

On 30 June, the employment Minister—who is disgracefully not answering for herself today—answered that question by saying:

“The Chief Secretary to the Treasury has approved the UC Strategic Outline Business Case plans for the remainder of this Parliament (2014-15) as per the ministerial announcement”.—[Official Report, 30 June 2014; Vol. 583, c. 434W.]

She was referring to the ministerial statement of 5 December, which explicitly runs up to 2017. On Monday, however, she had the carpet pulled from under her feet, as Sir Bob Kerslake answered exactly the same question with gratifying honesty, saying that

“it has not been signed off.”

It got worse yesterday when the Financial Secretary, answering the same question, said that all the Treasury has done is approve funding for the programme for another eight months, while a DWP spokesperson said that the Treasury has

“approved all funding to date”,

as if that was some grand vindication.

The same simple question has now been answered in eight contradictory ways. Not everybody can be telling the truth. There has been so much beating about the bush that it feels as if this House has been misled by a Government engaged in a deliberate act of deception. [Interruption.] The truth is that the Department is relying month by month on handouts from the national food bank. How ironic!

On 5 December 2013, the Secretary of State told the House that universal credit would bring

“a £38 billion economic benefit to society”.—[Official Report, 5 December 2013; Vol. 571, c. 65WS.]

I notice that he has just amended that figure to £35 billion. That figure is part of the business case. Has it been signed off by the Treasury, or is he just making things up?

The Secretary of State has told this House on 28 occasions that universal credit has always been on time and on budget; yet Sir Jeremy Heywood said on Monday that the Treasury and the Major Projects Authority had to tell the Secretary of State that his own project was “way off track”. When was he told that? Why did the Secretary of State not tell this House?

I will be honest: we would love to help the Secretary of State implement universal credit, but confession comes before redemption, and as long as he remains in denial he remains beyond help. I ask him once again to be straight with the House: has the business case—the business case, not the budget—for universal credit, which he says will come to fruition in 2017, been signed off—yes or no? [Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Just before the Secretary of State replies, I listened very carefully to what the hon. Gentleman said. He made no personal attack on any one individual. [Interruption.] Order. I will deal with this—the hon. Gentleman will have to accept my ruling, whether he likes it or not. The hon. Gentleman made no personal attack on any individual Minister, but my judgment, having heard him out, was that he went beyond the line in making an accusation of deliberate deception against a group of Ministers. [Interruption.] Order. I know what I am doing and I certainly do not require any help from the Education Secretary—that would be completely unimaginable. I ask Members to have regard to the way in which they express themselves. The point has been made, the situation is clear and the Secretary of State can now reply.

DWP: Performance

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 30th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I will make a little progress, because I am conscious that many Members wish to speak.

With regard to employment and support allowance, I make no secret of the fact that the process of reform is challenging; I have said so from the word go. There will always be issues when dealing with such delicate matters, but the question of how we deal with them and what lessons we learn is important. Let me remind the House that the previous Government, with our support—I thought that they were moving in the right direction—introduced the WCA, but the contract was a very difficult one. To break it arbitrarily would have cost over £30 million. What we saw at the beginning, and then had to change, was some very harsh decision making, particularly in relation to those with cancer and mental health conditions. Some 200,000 cases were then locked in the system in a growing backlog, and there were a very high and rising number of appeals. In fact, the previous Government had to increase spending on appeals by 1,500% at the time.

We have taken decisive action to deliver improvements. There have been four independent reviews, which have accepted over 50 Harrington recommendations. There is now an easier route into the support group for cancer sufferers, and there are three times more people with mental health conditions in the support group than there were in 2009. We ended the Atos contract a year early, with a significant sum paid back to the Department by Atos. More than 1.35 million incapacity benefit claimants have gone through the reassessment process, and 720,000 more people are now preparing or looking for work. Furthermore, appeals against ESA decisions are down by just under 90% and we are bringing in a new provider. The hon. Member for Leeds West pressed me about the new provider, so let me say something about it. We are going through the competition process and companies are willing to bid and compete. In due course, we will announce which companies secure the bid in the end. There will be a new provider.

Now we are doing the same to drive down the ESA backlog, which has fallen by 100,000 in the past few months—it is now about 688,000 and falling further. That is a good start, but I understand that there are concerns and issues that people want to raise. [Interruption.] I thought that somebody at the back wanted to intervene.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

You’re begging them to intervene.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I do not need people to intervene on me; the hon. Gentleman makes enough noise for all of them. One thing I do know is that he needs to listen more and talk less.

We made the deliberate choice to introduce PIP in a controlled and phased way. [Interruption.] It is good fun being opposite the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant); one does not need much of an audience with him sitting there.

We have taken the right approach. On PIP, the NAO said, “The Department has learnt from the controlled start in April 2013…the MPA identified the controlled start as a positive way to implement the programme and reduce the risks”. As I said, the delays faced by some people are unacceptable, and we are committed to putting that right. Already we have introduced a dedicated service to fast-track terminally ill people, and that is down to around 10 days and below. The Public Accounts Committee has said that too many people have waited longer than six months. By the autumn, no one will be waiting longer than six months, and before the end of the year, no one will be waiting for more than 16 weeks, which brings things back into line with where we were expecting them to be.

--- Later in debate ---

[Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

It is a great privilege for me to be able to contribute to this debate, having worked in the Department for a number of years with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb). I believe these reforms are one of the most important parts of the plan for this country’s long-term economic recovery, because they are helping to recreate the environment for work and enterprise, rather than disempowering people and writing them off to a lifetime on benefits.

I listened with disbelief to the hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves). I expected a slightly more thoughtful contribution from her, so I was disappointed. These reforms were ducked by the Labour party when it was in government for 13 years. It had 13 years to put things right and missed the opportunity. I think it was clear to many Labour Members that things could not continue as they were. Indeed, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has said, the safety net had become a trap. Labour saw that, but it simply did not have the courage to act. My right hon. Friend does have the courage to act and it is he and his colleagues who will make progress.

It is this Government who are creating the environment that has allowed for 2 million more people to be employed in the private sector since the election, but it is the welfare reform programme that has helped to make sure that the jobs that have been created can be taken by the people who were on benefits. Some 3.6 million people have been helped off jobseeker’s allowance, including through the Work programme. The benefit cap has also encouraged more people to take up those new jobs, and universal jobmatch is enabling 4 million daily searches.

The hon. Member for Leeds West is right to say that this Government inherited significant challenges, but if we are going to succeed we have the right team to make it happen. They are not just taking forward a set of practical measures, as outlined by the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee; they are also overseeing a cultural change. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has not been afraid to talk about the role of work and its importance to families, as well as the corrosive effect of unemployment and intergenerational unemployment. The Labour party was perfectly prepared to sit back and see a generation of people trapped on long-term benefits. That is entirely inexcusable. It is this Government who want to consider what people can do, not simply disregard them for what they cannot do.

This debate would benefit from a few more facts being put on the table, particularly the fact that the overall spend on disability benefits will have been higher in every year up to 2015-16 than it was in 2010. My colleagues on the Front Bench are continuing to spend some £50 million a year to support disabled people. Under universal credit, the expenditure will increase by some £300 million. We will not write people off to a lifetime on benefits. We will provide the right support to help them get back into work.

We have not finished the job yet—there is a great deal more to do—and we will always have to make choices about the way that money is used, but we want to make sure that it is used for those who need it most. I am most pleased that that continues to be this team’s philosophy.

I am particularly concerned about the position in which many young people find themselves when they enter the job market. If we look at countries such as Spain, we see that the level of unemployment for many young people is pretty scary. Under Labour, youth unemployment increased by some 24%, but it has fallen under this Government. We should be proud of those figures and we should continue to make sure that they move in the right direction.

The future jobs fund failed so many thousands of young people and cost up to £6,500 per placement, but it simply did not provide young people with the long-term jobs that they wanted and expected. By contrast, when I visited my own local jobcentre recently I heard how, under the Youth Contract, work experience is enabling so many young people to get their foot in the door, to prove themselves and to convert the experience into a proper long-term job. That is the sort of programme we need more of, and I commend my colleagues for the work they are doing.

[Chris Bryant]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Maria Miller]

If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I will not; there is a time limit.

I urge my colleagues on the Front Bench to make sure that we do more to support more businesses to take on young people and give them the sort of opportunities I heard about at my local jobcentre in Basingstoke.

Time is far too short for me to make all the points I would have liked to make. The hon. Member for Leeds West said that this debate was about how we treated our fellow citizens, and I agree with her wholeheartedly. It is right that every one of our constituents is valued for who they are. It is important that we view them according to their abilities and do not simply write them off to a lifetime on benefits.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 23rd June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I believe it is getting sorted. Very soon, the Department for Education will be able to make announcements about its preferred options for universal credit, and we will be able to accommodate them regardless of what it asks for.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

That is very interesting. In 2011, the then employment Minister, the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), said that the Department would consult on new eligibility criteria for passported benefits such as free school meals

“in good time to take decisions to meet our overall timetable to introduce universal credit by October 2013.”—[Official Report, 7 November 2011; Vol. 535, c. 66W.]

The Schools Minister has only just admitted that it would cost an extra £750 million to give free school meals to the children of all those whom he eventually expects to be on universal credit. Can we clear this up this afternoon? Do the Government intend to give free school meals to everyone on universal credit, or do they intend to introduce a new means test for free school meals? If the Secretary of State cannot give a proper answer this afternoon, as I suspect from the way he is performing, will he at least tell us when he will make up his mind?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

It is interesting that the hon. Gentleman does this publicly—he was told the answer to this the other day when he came to my office to talk to me directly. Just in case he does not know how free school meals work, let me tell him that they are means-tested today: there is no change to that.

[Chris Bryant]

No, they are not.

Incapacity Benefit Migration

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Thursday 3rd April 2014 Westminster Hall

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

It is a delight to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner, and to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore). The Minister and I agree that since she arrived in the House she has made a dramatic contribution on the issue of work and pensions, the way in which the Department functions and how the Labour party develops its policy on the issue.

I will start on a point of consensus. Everybody in the Chamber believes that the best route out of poverty for the vast majority of people is work. That is not as easy for some people as it is for others. Some people start life with phenomenal advantages, whether it is an uncle who can ring up somebody and secure a job for them, an easy route into an apprenticeship or an internship, or the financial freedom to leave university with no debt. We all agree that the social security system must be there for everybody in their time of need. We may think we will never have a moment of need in our life, but it may come suddenly. For some people it lasts for a protracted period, and for others it lasts throughout their lives.

Notwithstanding the sometimes exaggerated and sometimes deliberately misleading fulminations in the press, the vast majority of people want to live in a country in which we all put a little more into the pot to support those who have profound disabilities and who genuinely find it difficult to work and provide for themselves and their families. It is not just that we know that one day we might need to rely on that support ourselves. We also all agree that “need” is not the same thing as “want”. Sometimes people want financial support from the taxpayer, or from wherever else, but do not actually need it. Occasionally, the most supportive and honourable course is to say, “No, there is not going to be a benefit available to you, and you are going to have to pursue as hard as you can any work opportunities there might be.”

I am MP for an area in which a large number of people of working age—between 25% and 27%—are on some form of incapacity or disability benefit. That is much higher than in most areas of the country, largely because for a period one industry was entirely dominant. In four generations, that industry went from employing 75,000 men to employing nobody. Many people in Rhondda used to suffer from conditions associated with mining—particularly musculoskeletal and chest conditions—but today those who have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease are far more likely to have it because of smoking than because they worked in a mine. However, patterns of poverty and multiple levels of deprivation are, as my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East said, often concentrated in areas in which one heavy industry—whether shipbuilding, iron, steel or coal—dominated and then disappeared. That creates a set of challenges for how we support disabled people through the social security system.

As my hon. Friend said, Governments of both stripes—there are three stripes now, because we have had coalition, Labour and Conservative Governments—have found it challenging to get this issue right. We want to show compassion to those who are in need, but the Treasury and the taxpayer have legitimate concerns. I have a passionate desire to see as many people as possible working who would otherwise be living in poverty, because, frankly, a life on benefits is not the fullest life available to the vast majority of people. I conceive trying to get as many people as possible into work as a socialist endeavour. I say gently to the Minister that when the Secretary of State and other Ministers suggest that Labour had no interest in people on disability benefits throughout our 13 years in government, that is a misrepresentation, and in their heart of hearts they know it.

Something else on which the Minister and I can agree is that people with disabilities face significant disadvantages in the workplace. It is not just the obvious disabilities such as blindness and deafness or being in a wheelchair that make it more difficult for people to get jobs; it is often much more difficult for people to sustain paid employment when they have a condition that is not linear, continuous or regular but has a chaotic pattern. A lot of work in former industrial areas is no longer available in those areas and people are required to travel. There are significant challenges for those with disabilities and they must be taken into consideration.

Disabilities tend to come not as single spies, but as battalions. Someone who is out of work because of one disability for more than six months is six times more likely to acquire a significant mental health problem. Mental health conditions are often the most difficult to assess in terms of need, and mental health charities have argued strongly that the best route back to mental health for the majority is going into work. It provides self-esteem, as my hon. Friend said, it socialises people so that they are not isolated at home, and it improves their financial situation. When all those issues are considered, the more we can do to get more people into work the better.

One of my biggest concerns about the cost of social security when we were in government was that it was often born in the mental health of those who were still out of work because they had no opportunity to change their situation. People on incapacity benefit often experience a double layer of anxiety because their next-door neighbours may think they are swinging the lead and automatically presume that a mental health problem is not as serious as a physical problem. Clearly that is not true, but the stigma attached to mental health is significant. Some 50% of the people we are talking about may be in receipt of benefits for conditions related to mental health or with a mental health condition on top of other problems. That is one of the most difficult problems in enabling people to get into work, and tackling it is a challenge.

I also believe, as does the Minister—I have never heard him say so, but I think he agrees—that the move we undertook before the last general election away from the old set of benefits to employment and support allowance was right. It provided greater consistency and coherence and we were right to insist that instead of assessing what someone could not do, we should assess what they could do.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Mike Penning)]

As Hansard may not be able to record my nod, may I say that I completely agree with what the previous Government were trying to do before the last election? Assessment is vital, and I reiterate the shadow Minister’s point that the issue should be what someone can do rather than what they cannot do. That should apply to life in general, not just to work.

[Chris Bryant]

I am grateful for the Minister’s intervention. I am aware from my experience in the Rhondda that historically, under both Conservative and Labour Governments, when mines closed there were many men with musculoskeletal or chest problems related to their work in the mines who could no longer work in a mine or do heavy labour, but there were other jobs they could have done. In many places, it became part of the mindset that someone was either fit for work or unfit for work. Those were the only two categories. I wonder whether the phrase “fit for work” contributes to that. This may be a trite comment, but Douglas Bader worked. I know many constituents with profound disabilities who work hard every day, but others find it much more challenging. There is a mindset in some parts of the country that has been difficult to transform over the years.

Some years ago, before ESA was introduced, a man came to my surgery having been assessed as fit for work. He told me angrily that that was disgraceful because he had had a heart attack 14 years previously and two major operations, and had been on incapacity benefit since then, but he had worked all his life. I suggested that he had not worked all his life, and he said he had worked all his working life. I said that I was not a doctor and could not assess whether he was fit for work because I had no means of working that out. He said, “I knew you’d be rubbish. Everyone tells me you’re rubbish, and the worst of it is that the Labour party is so pathetic in the benefits it gives me that I have to go and mix cement on a building site every day of the week.”

What was shocking about that was not so much the fact that he did not quite understand the system and that he was clearly fit for work because he went to work every day and did manual labour, but that he thought that was a legitimate argument to put to a Member of Parliament. Fortunately, he had already given me his name and address so he was not in receipt of benefits thereafter. I hope he went on to get a proper job that was more fulfilling for him instead of going through the black market. If the ingenuity that some people have used in the black market were used in the legitimate market, we might be a far more entrepreneurial nation.

[Mike Penning]

I am sure the hon. Gentleman was coming to this, but we have all heard of such examples face to face in our constituency surgeries, although perhaps not so abruptly. Such behaviour is damaging to those who receive benefits because they are not capable or working, and infuriates disabled people who are in work and have worked all their lives. I am thinking of a proud Welshman, Simon Weston, who we all know has given so much to his country and was recently voted the nation’s most heroic figure. Not only is he an entrepreneur, but I understand that he has never taken sickness benefit at any time, even though his injuries are profound.

[Chris Bryant]

I do not want to leap from that to the suggestion that someone who is in receipt of disability benefit is not a hero. The situation often depends on someone’s family and community support, the nature of their condition and so on. Sometimes a single condition may be predictable in how it will play out for the rest of the sufferer’s life. Other conditions, particularly degenerative ones, are much more chaotic and their effects cannot be predicted.

[Sheila Gilmore]

There will always be people at all levels of society who try to exploit the system. Many people who are being found to be fit for work may need much more attention to their special situation. Many people with learning disabilities need a lot of help and support to hold down jobs. A voluntary organisation in my constituency runs a café and bakery, and trains learning-disabled youngsters, but the problem for many of them is that working in mainstream catering would be difficult, and they could not cope with McDonalds or Starbucks.

[Chris Bryant]

I do not go to Starbucks any more because of tax issues, but my hon. Friend is absolutely right.

I do not want to stereotype the Rhondda, but my surgery is held in a room with thin walls and by the end of the encounter with my constituent we were shouting at one another. When he left the room saying he was going to report me to the police—I was not sure what for—everyone queuing outside applauded me, not him, because they had the same attitude as everyone else: stealing from the system is fraud, and it is theft from other people. There is no innocence, and in one sense it is the worst form of theft. However, the level of such fraud is small, and such stories are sometimes blown up out of all proportion so people get the impression that everyone is at it, which is not true.

[Dame Anne Begg (Aberdeen South) (Lab)]

The Select Committee on Work and Pensions has just embarked on an inquiry into fraud and error in the benefits system, and I would say that the extent of that is fairly small. However, may I give my hon. Friend another example? Somebody came to my office as a cleaner through the new deal for disabled people. There are people who have been out of work for 10 years, as she had, with mental health problems. She thought she would never work again, but the correct support—with a job broker, with someone just building up her confidence—got her into work and she ended up expanding from that job into other jobs as well. As it turns out, she had Parkinson’s disease, not mental health problems, and I have never seen anybody so relieved to get a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease, because she knew what that was and she could cope with it. However, the key was the specialist, detailed help that she got as an individual, and my concern is that that is perhaps what is lacking in some of the new areas that the Government have introduced in order to try and get people with disabilities into work.

[Chris Bryant]

I would go further—I think that sometimes the organisations that are most fleet of foot, most sensitive and come without some kind of governmental sanctions regime, such as those in the voluntary sector, can be the most successful at enabling somebody to gain the self-esteem that enables them to get into work.

I remember working with the Prince’s Trust in my constituency with kids who are at risk. People there were saying that they could not understand why kids who really enjoyed coming on some of the courses that they were doing, which were all about confidence building and so on, all turned up uniformly late—not uniformly late in the sense that they all arrived at the same time, but that they always arrived late. It was only when they worked out that the kids could not tell the time that they realised what the problem was: because the kids were in families where nobody was in work, nobody was used to getting up in the morning to go to work. That is why a basic skills assessment is vital.

Of course, schools should be dealing with all these issues, but sometimes that does not happen. It is a fact that we still have a significant number of people who are, to all intents and purposes, innumerate and illiterate, and tackling those basic skills and providing an assessment very early on is one of the important changes that we need to bring in. I worry that the voluntary sector, which has had a very tough time since 2010, certainly in my patch, is not able to provide the support that leads to people being able to get into jobs, as it was able to do historically.

[Dame Anne Begg]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Chris Bryant]

I will, but I am conscious that I have now gone on for quite a long time.

[Dame Anne Begg]

I thank my hon. Friend.

It has become an afternoon for anecdotes. When I was teaching, there was a young boy who could not turn up to school on time. I was his form teacher, and I discovered that the rest of his family had all been schoolphobics, that his parents did not work, and that although they did have a clock at home they could not work out how to set the alarm. I got him to bring it in and that is exactly what we did. We were able to keep him in school a bit longer than we managed with his siblings.

[Chris Bryant]

I cannot set the alarm on nearly any of the things in my house and I have not got children to be able to do it for me—they are basic skills. I will move on, if I may.

It is also true, as I think we all agree, that poor initial decisions end up being expensive for everyone. I think Governments of whatever stripe would like to be able to improve the quality of initial decisions. As was found in the run-up to 2013, £26.3 million had been spent on the tribunal service. The Government have changed the way in which that operates, and I shall come to that later, but when 19% of appeals are still overturning the initial decision, a lot of money is effectively going down the drain on behalf of the taxpayer. I suppose some lawyers would say that paying them is not money going down the drain, but if we could improve the quality of initial decisions, whether that is down to form-filling, ensuring that the correct information is available from the very beginning, or whatever it is, we would be saving ourselves time and energy, and most importantly, saving a great deal of heartache for a considerable number of people.

I shall move on to some of the problems that exist at the moment. It is uncontested that Atos has not been a great success. I think Atos itself would say that—in fact, it has done. It has effectively put its hand up and said that it has not been a great success. We note that the Government are now ending the deal; that is an established fact, but I would like to ask the Minister a few questions and if he is not able to answer fully now, I completely understand, because the questions are relatively technical, but I should be grateful if he would write to me.

The Minister referred, I think in questions on Monday, to the fact that Atos will be paying him—

[Mike Penning]

Not me personally.

[Chris Bryant]

No, not him personally—paying the Government. Will the Minister clarify exactly how anyone is arriving at a figure and what that figure is likely to be, because it will undoubtedly affect whatever the tender process is for a new contract? Will he also lay out exactly how he thinks that new tender process will go? Does he have a time scale for it? When does he think that might be in play?

I note that Atos said that it has been worried about death threats for its staff and so on. Even if we were to take out of the equation the fact that lots of people think Atos has done a terrible job—people have been able to point to some terrible mistakes and hideous instances where people who were either already dead or nearly dead were being told that they were fit for work, which has undoubtedly inspired a great deal of anger—whoever is doing work capability assessments in future will have to make unpopular decisions, by definition, because they will be turning some people down. What assessment have the Government made of the provision that there needs to be in any tender process, or for that matter, in future ongoing relations with whatever company will be doing this, to make sure that there is protection and that security is not compromised?

Capacity is another issue. Certainly by mid-2010 or by the end of 2010, it was pretty clear that there were not enough doctors and other medical staff—or, for that matter, administrative staff—to be able to do the work at Atos, so how do we make sure in any future tender that that does not happen all over again? It means that even if the Government want to say, “We are going to do more assessments,” they are unable to do so, which is why, because of the capacity problems, the Government have had to change what they are doing about people who are already coming up for reassessment after two years. Making sure that the capacity is there from the start is an important part of it.

As I said, the Government have now suspended reassessment for those on ESA for two years. I wonder what the cost of that is now going to be. I presume that the Government have made an assessment of that, because they would have been presuming that the reassessment was there for a purpose and that it would take more people off ESA. I wonder how many people they reckon will stay on who, in a sense, they would have thought otherwise might not be on it. The Government made assumptions when they introduced the policy, which they are presumably now unbundling. What are they assessing the future cost to be for each of the future years? How many people does that affect? How many people on ESA for two years would have been being assessed now, but are not being assessed?

On cost, the Office for Budget Responsibility report states:

“ESA is higher by £0.8 billion in 2014-15 and 2015-16…because the latest evidence suggests the caseload is higher than we assumed in December, despite substantial upward revisions made at that time. We have also updated the modelling on repeat work capability assessments, which has increased our assumption about the length of time and number of claimants waiting for a repeat assessment, meaning more claims continue for longer”.

It may be that I have just answered my previous question to the Minister, because it may be that the £800 million is all to do with not doing the extra reassessments—in which case, does he have any idea when we might be able to start doing reassessments? That might be a capacity question, but that £800 million is a significant cost.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Given that reassessments have been delayed or suspended—out of necessity, it appears, rather than conviction—does my hon. Friend agree that this might be an appropriate time to look again at reassessment periods? Part of the criticism has been that people, even those in the support group, are being called back for reassessment relatively frequently, and that that is an expensive, distressing and probably pointless activity. Given that we now have a hiatus in the system, is it not time to look at all that again?

[Chris Bryant]

I think that we always have to keep the matter under review; otherwise we are wasting time and energy on a process that is just injurious to the health of people whom we are trying to help, and at a cost to the taxpayer that does not provide a dividend. So, yes, of course the Government should do that. I was just hoping that the Government would be able to say whether the £800 million relates to the people who would have been reassessed. How many people will continue to receive benefits even though the Government have basically decided that they should not?

I want to talk about access to mental health services, because one of the issues that arose in Health questions earlier this week was that there has been a significant fall-off in the availability of talking therapies, and there is clear evidence that talking therapies, whether cognitive behavioural therapy or others, are predominantly concentrated in areas where there are fewer people on the various kinds of incapacity benefit. That is rather unhelpful to the process of trying to get people with mental health needs back into work, so I wonder what strategy the Government have to try to ensure that it is addressed.

Incidentally, one other thought occurs to me in relation to the point that my hon. Friend has just made. There are only so many doctors in Britain. If the Government decide to take a lot of doctors into Atos to make assessments of people’s fitness for work, there is a danger that they will simply be taking doctors out of the national health service, and that may have an impact locally on whether people are being helped back into work by getting better, rather than being forced back into work by being assessed by Atos. Of course, that is where there has to be a joined-up Government approach.

I want to ask the Minister about the Work programme, because, as my hon. Friend rightly said, there is a significant problem in that respect. The Secretary of State effectively admitted that in Work and Pensions questions on Monday. I think that he had hoped and expected that a much larger percentage of people would have been helped into work through the Work programme. Of those with disabilities, it is something like 5%, which is a very low level.

Of course, we all know from our constituency case load that some people need dramatic intervention to be able to get into work. Drug and alcohol abuse, leading to and coming from chaotic lifestyles, often makes it very difficult to assist people, even though there are many people with addictions of various kinds who are fully functioning in a work environment—we have only to look at the history of Parliament to see that. What assessment have the Government made of how the Work programme could be improved to enable more people with disabilities to get into work, or do the Government believe that the situation is not improvable and that 5% is what the level is going to be?

[Dame Anne Begg]

Is my hon. Friend aware that the specialist employment programme for people with disabilities is called Work Choice? One would expect that the majority of the people on Work Choice, if not all, would be in receipt of ESA and be in the WRAG group, but actually almost all of them are on jobseeker’s allowance; they have been found fully fit for work. That might explain why Work programme providers are not being successful in getting ESA claimants into work—that specialist help is not for them; it is for people who are closer to the labour market than they are.

[Chris Bryant]

Which is the next paragraph on my sheet of paper. We just managed to hear it from a different voice, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend.

I want to move on to the issue of discretionary housing payments. The Papworth Trust has found that over three quarters of councils include disability living allowance in assessing people’s eligibility for discretionary housing payments. That is against Government advice. Of course, because the system is discretionary, it is not Government-enforced, but that is one of my concerns about the discretionary system. People can be living on either side of a street, and just because one council decides to include DLA in the assessment and the other decides not to, they are treated differently.

My anxiety about that is that it leads to people not trusting the system in the end, because people do not know the specifics of who is in charge of deciding what. They just think, “He’s got it; I haven’t got it. That seems unfair.” When that is alive in the system, confidence in the whole of Government and the welfare or social security system falls apart, especially because the clear evidence now is that people with disabilities are less likely to be granted an award under the discretionary housing payment system than people without a disability. That seems to be at odds with what I presume the Government would like to achieve, so I wonder whether their advice needs to get stronger, whether we need to lose the word “discretionary” or whether the system needs to be restructured.

[Dame Anne Begg]

The Work and Pensions Committee’s report that was published yesterday on support for housing costs states:

“We recommend that the Government issues revised guidance to local authorities which advises them to disregard disability benefits in means tests to assess eligibility for DHP awards.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

That rather chimes with what I was suggesting, and the Minister has just winked at me, for the record, so I can only assume that that was not a personal recommendation, but—

[Mike Penning]

I have a piece of grit in my eye.

[Chris Bryant]

I hope it is not a plank. Anyway, I hope that we are singing from the same hymn sheet.

I have one more serious point, which relates to mandatory reconsideration. Obviously, the Government have changed the system of appeals. We have now moved on to the system of mandatory reconsideration. There seems to be some evidence that that has meant that quite a lot of people have shifted on to JSA, because they are nervous about what will happen. That may, as my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg) says, take them away from further support, rather than end up enabling them to get into work. I want to ask the Minister how many people that now applies to. Is the number of people seeking mandatory reconsideration higher or lower than the previous number of people who would go for appeal?

Because the Department has no fixed limit on how long the process can take, I wonder how long on average it is taking for a mandatory reconsideration to be arrived at. Someone would be in limbo, potentially, for a considerable time. We have seen that in other areas. For instance, assessments for the personal independence payment have been taking three months, six months, nine months, a year and so on. I think that all of us would be rather hesitant about allowing the Government to have a blank sheet on this and to reply whenever they felt like it.

I would like to talk about sanctions, but a debate is happening in the main Chamber on sanctions, so I think that we will leave that issue to hon. Members who are there. As I said, I hope that where the Minister is not able to provide instant answers, he will write to me. If he has not replied at the end, I will write him a letter, so he will have to write to me then anyway.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 31st March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The reason why we are doing this in a way that tests it at each stage, so we make sure we have got it right before rolling it out and taking more numbers on board, is because we want to make sure that taxpayers’ money is protected through this process and that the system works. I recall, as I am sure my hon. Friend does, that when the Labour Government launched tax credits it was a total disaster; we had loads of people in our surgeries with real problems relating to payments. This Government will never revisit that, which is why I will never accept any advice from the lot who wasted billions on failed IT programmes.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I know the Secretary of State loves to argue that black is white and white is black, but how on earth can he possibly stand here and suggest that this project is “on track”? The Government promised that 1 million people would be on universal credit by tomorrow—by 1 April this year—but how many are on it? He said at the beginning of the month that there were 6,000, but the figures given by the Minister of State, the right hon. Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey), show that fewer than 4,000 are. So precisely how many people are working on the IT? Is it 50, as the Secretary of State just said, or is the figure eight, as the Minister of State said earlier this month?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I know the hon. Gentleman likes to get up and speak, but sometimes he needs to be aware of the facts that have been given to him. I have just given those facts, but because he was not listening I will give them again. Of the team of 50 working on the digital system, 25 are digital specialists—there will be more as we develop it and report back. May I simply say that instead of moaning about this system, Opposition Members might like to visit it, as many other MPs have done, because they will see how successful its rolling out has been? Some 90% of the claims for JSA as a result of universal credit are now made online, and 78% are monthly payments—these are people confident to receive those payments. [Interruption.] The reality is that the systems the Labour Government implemented were failures, whereas this will succeed and change many people’s lives.

Under-Occupancy Penalty (North-West)

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 25th March 2014 Westminster Hall

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

It is a delight to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries. I note that I am the only man taking part in this debate, which must be a first for the House of Commons. I hope there are many more debates in which men are in the minority. It is a shame that, all too often, debates involve men talking to men—probably with nobody listening.

I warmly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) on securing this debate, not least because all too often in Westminster politics we think that, once we have pulled a lever, everything will suddenly change out in the rest of the country. Actually, the vast majority of policies advanced by any Government, of left or right, end up having to be implemented by local authorities, and this policy is a classic instance. In many cases, not just local authorities but a series of social landlords are involved.

The direct relationship between Government and those implementing the policy is not as clear as people might assume, which is one of the reasons why the Government have got some areas of the policy profoundly wrong. They did not do the groundwork to establish what the real situation is out in the wider country before enacting the policy.

This is the kind of policy that someone might dream up just before they go to bed or when they are in the shower. They suddenly think it is a brilliant idea because there is no official there to say, “Ah, but Minister.” By the time they have got into the office, they think it is the best idea ever. Unfortunately, they then meet other Ministers who are also desperate for a good idea, and they think, “That sounds like a good old wheeze. Let’s do that.”

The policy, as a whole, was advanced too rapidly. However shiny and new it might have seemed to the Government, I know a large number of Conservative Back Benchers who wish it had not been implemented and look forward to the day when the whole thing can go. All that glisters is not gold, and this has been a meretricious policy.

My first problem is that, as my hon. Friends the Members for Makerfield and for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) have said, the policy’s implementation has been fundamentally unfair. Both my hon. Friends have said that the significant difference between the Government’s policy and our policy, which addressed commercial landlords, is that the Government’s policy has been implemented retrospectively. In other words, it affects people who are already living in a property.

In recent months, we have discovered that people who live in social housing, particularly council housing or housing association properties, are more likely to live for long periods in the same property than anyone else in the housing market. Some may see that as a problem, but it also presents a significant challenge because the policy is radically changing people’s understanding of their home.

What I have just said does not apply to me because I moved so frequently as a child that I have always thought of wherever I lay my hat as my home. However, the vast majority of people live in the same house for 10, 15 or 20 years, and sometimes for much longer. In some constituencies in the north-west, there will be people who not only live in the house they moved into when they were first married, but live in the same street or estate in which the rest of their family have lived since the estate was first built. In some cases, they will have taken over the tenancy from their parents and have effectively lived in the same house all their lives.

The policy, of course, drives a coach and horses through that understanding of a home. Ultimately, it is profoundly—I want to say un-English, but I am Welsh and my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East is Scottish—un-British not to think of the home of an Englishman or Englishwoman as their castle.

[Yvonne Fovargue]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is not only family lives that are being destroyed? The aim was to build stable communities in which people support and help each other and run voluntary groups. The policy destroys communities, as well as lives.

[Chris Bryant]

Absolutely, not least because one of the key things that all parts of the House agree about is that we need to get more people into work. Particular families and communities have historically found it much more difficult to get into work. The issue is not only about whether work pays—although that is key and is why we originally supported the national minimum wage, facing down the howls of those who said it would lead to mass unemployment—but the support mechanisms that someone has when they first go into work. Otherwise, benefits are seen as more reliable, and if someone thinks that, they will stick with them.

If someone has child care responsibilities or care responsibilities for an adult relative, they need other family members close by. All too often since the bedroom tax was introduced, we have seen people forced to move to areas where they have no support, which makes it more difficult for them to get into work. Perhaps we Opposition Members too often rant and rave at Conservatives for being cruel, out of touch and not having any interest in the working poor—that has not always been true of them, historically—but some of the policies advanced, particularly those of the Department for Work and Pensions, have effectively cut off a nose to spite a face. They have seemed like savings and cuts, but in practice they have just added costs to the social welfare budget, which is why the Chancellor had to announce last week that he was increasing the estimate for welfare spending for this year by £1 billion and for next year by another £1 billion.

People are living myriad different lives, with different congregations of families and different community set-ups, social understandings and cultural mores, and it is incumbent on Ministers, particularly DWP Ministers, to work with the grain of human nature, rather than against it. The policy fundamentally works against the grain of human nature and the housing market.

All too often the Government have presumed that, because they said in theory that the policy is all about dealing with the mismatch of some properties being under-occupied and many properties being over-occupied, they have to get the families that are overcrowded to move into undercrowded properties. If everyone could step on to the pavement on one day, immediately swap and move into the next property, that might be true, and if there was an exact match of overcrowded and underused in each area—whether geographical, local authority or housing association—that presumption might work.

The facts on the ground, however, as we know from all the different surveys that have been done over the past year, are that there is a total mismatch. People have no choice about moving, downsizing or going to smaller properties, particularly in the short term. It might take them two, three, four, five, six, or, as my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield said, seven years to move, and that is why the measure is a tax. In the end, people have no choice and have to surrender that extra bit of money.

The £16 might seem like nothing to Ministers in a Department that thinks that pensioners might spend their pot on a Lamborghini, but that is a significant amount of money to my and my hon. Friends’ constituents, particularly when real wages have been depressed and the number of hours and amount of overtime that people are allowed to work have fallen. Many more people have been put on zero-hours contracts. In that environment, £16—or £25, if it is two rooms—extra cost a week is a significant amount of money, and that is why the policy is unfair. It might seem fair to put all the overcrowded people into the underused accommodation, but if no one has checked whether there is enough accommodation to do that, it ends up being unfair.

The evidence of the unfairness is that the Government have had to provide discretionary housing payment schemes for local authorities. With discretionary housing payments, the word I dislike most is “discretionary”, because it means that someone living in one local authority on one side of the road in the north-west might be granted a DHP, while someone on the other side of the road will not get that payment, for the single reason that they live in a different local authority.

There is an added problem with discretionary payments, which is that the local authority knows—let us say it is getting £1 million over a year—not to spend any in April, May or June. That happens every time the Government introduce such a system. The authority will start spending a little only in July, August and September, because it knows that the big numbers will come knocking on the door in December, January and February. That means that there is no consistency across the year.

The Minister revealed that fact—I do not think she intended to—when she was attacking one of my hon. Friends from Manchester about the discretionary housing payment system there. She said that it was outrageous that we were complaining about the amount available to Manchester last July and September, because the city had not spent that part of the year’s money. Of course the city had not spent it, because no local authority does. Local authorities are prudent and save money for when they will have to spend more, which is in winter, at Christmas and towards the end of the year. They have to save against what might be a particular rainy day. The Minister, by her own admission, has laid out that the policy is unfair.

As my hon. Friends said, the Government never expected everyone to move. They said:

“In many areas this mismatch could mean that there are insufficient properties to enable tenants to move to accommodation of an appropriate size even if tenants wished to move and landlords were able to facilitate this movement.”

If there was ever an ownership of the fact that the measure is a tax, that was it. It made clear that the Government know that many people will simply have to pay more money.

I disagree with the policy’s fundamental principles and also with how it was introduced. The Prime Minister more than once boldly stated at Prime Minister’s Question Time that no disabled people would be affected by the bedroom tax. He said that on countless occasions, but we know that two thirds of those affected, according to every survey that has been done in local authorities up and down the land, are disabled. The Prime Minister is closing his eyes to the truth, he does not know the truth or someone is not putting the truth in front of him. I do not know what it is, but the point is that the Prime Minister is completely and utterly misled. I am not saying that he has misled people; I am simply saying that he must be misled.

The other incompetence in how the Government have advanced the policy—we know the legislative incompetence: they brought forward the legislation quickly and then discovered a loophole some nine months into the process, or perhaps a little earlier—is that they are still going through this ludicrously bizarre process of denial about how many people are affected by the loophole. On one day earlier this year, the Minister for Welfare Reform, Lord Freud, said in the House of Lords that an insignificant number of people were affected, the Minister here replied to a written question saying that she did not have any idea how many people were affected, and the Secretary of State said that between 3,000 and 5,000 people were affected.

Yesterday, after the urgent question in the Chamber, the Minister let it be known that the Department will provide £2.1 million for local authorities to do the trawling. That is just for the process of trawling, and not for the payments that will have to be made to those who were illegally charged. She says, and said again yesterday, that the £2.1 million applies to 5,000 people. Sometimes she says it quite angrily and sometimes she says it more emolliently; we will see which version we get today, although it looks like it will be the angry one, given the furrowed brow I am getting. I presume that the Minister can calculate for me how much that is per person. Is a trawl really going to cost £420 per person? By her own admission, the Minister has yet again suggested that the 5,000 figure is not right. I do not know whether it will be 40,000 in total, but it certainly will not be just 5,000.

The Minister has regularly pooh-poohed the statistics that the Opposition provide, but we are only going by the freedom of information requests that we have made to local authorities. Let us look at how some authorities in the north-west replied when we asked them how many households had been affected. Burnley borough council said 60, Bury metropolitan borough council said 83 and Chorley borough council said 32. Eden district council said 30, while Fylde borough council said 80. For Lancaster city council, the figure was 35. Preston city council said 124. South Ribble borough council said 22, and Stockport metropolitan borough council said 126.

It is true that I do not have figures for all local authorities, because, despite our being long past the date by which they should have replied to the FOI request, only 15 out of 39 local authorities in the north-west have replied. Even so, there are 2,609 cases in the north-west alone thus far.

The Minister has criticised me several times, saying that the figure of 480 that I provided for St Helens is incorrect, but we have never provided that figure. We said that there were 178 confirmed cases in St Helens—178 cases where people have already been paid back. Not included in the figure for the north-west, however, is what Liverpool city council states it has already paid back, which is 1,300 households. It is absolutely clear that the 5,000 figure that the Minister cites for the whole country will probably be exceeded in the north-west alone.

It could be said that this is all neither here nor there and that it is dancing on the head of a pin and just about statistics, but what it suggests to me is that the Department for Work and Pensions simply has not done its homework and does not know. I would be quite happy were the Minister to stand up and say, “You know what? I really don’t know what the numbers are. They may be 40,000 or 5,000. Let us see what they are.” However, I object to the Minister’s simply going into denial and saying that nothing is happening because it implies a degree of callous disregard for what is going on in people’s lives. Incidentally, the total number of cases that we have received from local authorities is, with no spin from us, 23,309. That figure is based on the responses of fewer than half the local authorities asked, so it is likely that the final figure will be much higher than the Minister has suggested.

The danger is that if the Department has got this wrong, what else has it got wrong? I am absolutely certain that the Government’s predicted savings will nowhere near be met. Indeed, I suspect that the total effect, including people claiming other benefits, such as out-of-work benefits, will end up costing the taxpayer more. I hope that the Government will one day provide the full details.

So many areas of the policy have been incompetently laid out, not least what counts as a bedroom. Last year, the Minister tried to say that people should take a sledgehammer to walls and knock them down and that that would change the rules. According to the Department for Work and Pensions guidance, however, it does not. Liverpool city council was sent an e-mail by the Department that flatly contradicted what the Minister said in the House yesterday afternoon about who qualifies to inherit a tenancy. According to the e-mail, those qualified include any child or relative of a “polygamous marriage”. I thought that polygamous marriages were illegal in this country, but that is the advice that the DWP has provided to the council. Perhaps the Minister can respond to that specific issue.

Some people who have been illegally forced to pay the bedroom tax will now, because of the loophole, have been given discretionary housing payments. What is the Minister’s advice to local authorities? To how many people does she think that it will apply? How much is it costing? Is the Department paying it or do local councils have to pay it? Will individuals have to pay that money back or are the Government writing it off? If so, how much will that be?

We have already heard about some of the problems caused by the faulty policy. Thousands more people are in arrears, which is a real problem for local authorities and for social landlords around the country. Thousands more have been evicted—not only a tragedy for the families and individuals concerned, but also a problem for social landlords.

The policy fails to address some big, long-term issues and has made them worse. When I come up to Westminster from south Wales, it often feels that there is something of an economic recovery going on and I can see house prices rising magnificently, but my experience elsewhere in the country is completely and utterly different. My anxiety is that an economy that is already heavily overloaded towards London and the south-east will become more so. It is a problem for the people of London and the south-east as house prices get further and further out of reach for ordinary people in ordinary jobs. I worry that the Government’s policies will make that worse.

In the 1980s, contrary to my party’s policy at the time, I completely supported the idea of people being able to buy their own council house or social housing. It was actually first piloted by a Labour authority in Newport. [Interruption.] That is not in the north-west, as I think you are about to warn me, Ms Dorries.

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

I was about to remind you.

[Chris Bryant]

I can read your mind.

What was a mistake at that time in the north-west and everywhere else in the country, however, was that local authorities were not allowed to build more social housing, and we are paying the cost of that now. The previous Labour Government did not get it right either, but unless we build more houses and provide more supply at a time when demand is increasing every year, partly because more households are breaking down into smaller units and partly because there are simply more people, we will fail in the future.

I end with two remarks. First, the Government should repeal the bedroom tax for the people of the north-west and the whole of the country. If they do not, we will, and we have costed that commitment. Secondly, we need to do something to tackle the root problem in housing benefit, which is that antisocial landlords, who often provide substandard housing, are effectively being subsidised by the taxpayer. That must be wrong and that we will change.

--- Later in debate ---

[Esther McVey]

I have given way a lot, and have answers to provide. Despite the bluster and fluster and cries of “We cannot do it,” that policy would have been implemented by the Opposition.

We have provided for the most vulnerable, including disabled children who cannot share because of their disability; foster children; overnight non-resident carers for claimants and their partners; and live-in carers. We have also ensured that tenants can retain a bedroom for an adult child who is in the armed forces and deployed on operations. We have established support, and in addition the courts have confirmed that we have satisfied our equality duties by making additional discretionary housing payment funding available. In total we have provided discretionary housing payment funding of £180 million in this financial year. The Government have given local authorities the money to help people in need. In fact, we have gone further, and within the year we have allocated an extra £20 million for which the 380 local authorities in Great Britain could bid.

What happened with that extra money? Not all the local authorities bid for the extra £20 million that we put in place because they did not feel the need to, and only £13 million was taken, meaning that £7 million was not. Yet again, there were screams of protest from the Opposition about what was needed, but the money had been put in place and yet not all of it was utilised. In my local area, for example, Wirral council still had £180,000 to spend on discretionary housing payments by the end of the month. That was made up of £30,000 left over and an extra £150,000 that had been granted.

We are getting all that information back from people and finding out what they need, so I take great exception to the accusation that this policy was developed on the back of a fag packet—I think that is what the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) said.

[Chris Bryant]

I did not say that.

[Esther McVey]

It might appear that the Opposition’s benefits policy—

[Chris Bryant]

I did not say that.

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

Order. Mr Bryant, please do not interject from a sedentary position. Mr Bryant may not have said “on the back of a fag packet”, so perhaps the Minister will quote the words he did say to make the point. Mr Bryant, if you want to make an intervention, please do so, but do not interject in that way.

[Esther McVey]

Whether, in colloquial terms, the hon. Gentleman said that it was developed on the back of a fag packet, a cigarette packet or an envelope, it was discourteous, given the hundreds of hours of work that have been put in. I think he used the phrase “on an envelope in the shower”, but that was not the case, because many hours went into developing the policy. That might be how the Opposition make their benefits policy, because so far it seems they do not know what they are doing—what are they agreeing with, or not, and how are they helping the guarantee scheme, or not?

What the Government have done has had a profound effect on what is happening in the country: there are record rates of employment; youth unemployment has fallen for the past six consecutive months; there are record rates of women in work; and, as in the news today, the number of workless households is falling considerably. Far from our policy being made on the back of an envelope or cigarette packet, it is having significant effect. For a moment, I want to think about those people who have now got a job and are fulfilling their potential, supporting their families, getting their foot on the career ladder and working their way up. I meet such people every day, and they say how their lives have been transformed, so it is important that we listen to them as well.

As I said, 86 local authorities applied for extra money, although not all of them spent the extra £20 million, and not all councils felt that they needed it. Many of the Opposition scare stories did not happen at all and, despite the dire warnings, nor did the arrears. The report from the National Housing Federation stated that it is difficult to observe a rise in outstanding arrears. In fact, more than half of all working-age tenants in receipt of housing benefit were already in arrears before the new policy came into effect. While we are talking about people and their lives, moreover, there are lots of examples of people moving and downsizing. Among such people is Suzanne, from south Yorkshire, who had four children who are now grown up and have left home. She did not want to move, but she said that now that she has and has downsized, things are totally different. She has less of a heating bill—less in the way of bills altogether—can manage her cost of living and live within her means. It is key that we look at everyone’s requirements.

On the loophole that has been mentioned, we have been through this on various occasions. The person in question has to have been in the same house and continuously on housing benefit since 1996 to be part of the loophole. The Opposition were right: we did not know the entirety of the numbers. What we deemed to be roughly right, however, was the figure of £5,000, and we said that we would cover those costs, so we agreed with the local authorities—£2 million to do the extra work necessary. We agreed the amount of money to do the administrative work to support those people. Far from screaming and yelling, we have gone into the issue in our discussions. Indeed, we debated it yesterday, so I think it has been covered.

What is key is that we have to think about the policy into the future, and to support people who are in overcrowded accommodation, whether they are on waiting lists or already in social rented housing. It is about how we best go forward and provide support. We are dealing with the issue, which Labour did not want to do when in office—they were happy to see the housing bill double over 10 years and the waiting lists and overcrowding increase.

[Chris Bryant]

The Minister has not answered any of my questions, so I will ask them again. She has a moment or two to find the piece of paper bearing the inspiration. My first question is, how many people have already been given back their money because they were illegally charged under the bedroom tax, but who in the meantime have also been given discretionary housing payments? Will they have to pay that back?

[Esther McVey]

No one will pay anything back. The people who have got discretionary payments will keep them—they will have been paid to the social rented sector—and should they wish to use them going forward, they can.

[Chris Bryant]

I am grateful to the Minister for allowing my continued interventions. How much, therefore, are the Government writing down in that regard?

[Esther McVey]

We have said that we will take that into consideration. We are working on a set of numbers, and we presume the figure to be in the area of £5,000. We will take that cost on board, as we said—both the administrative cost, which we have agreed, and the extra costs that would have been used by the discretionary payments.

[Chris Bryant]

The Minister is generous in giving way again—

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

Order. Will this intervention relate to the north-west, Mr Bryant?

[Chris Bryant]

How much will the total amount of money be throughout the UK and, in particular, how much will it be in the north-west? We need to know the amounts of money the Minister is talking about for writing down purposes.

[Esther McVey]

The Labour party have never cared so much about money—hence we are in the debt we are in. We do not know how to sort out all of Labour’s problems.

I have said that that is a cost we will be covering and dealing with. We have put discretionary housing payments aside, although of even the most recent £20 million that we have offered, only £13 million was used, leaving £7 million. We have said that of course we will deal with the situation, and that is what we will be doing. At the end of the day, however, we are talking about what is happening in Wigan and the north-west. We have to look at everyone, whether in the social rented sector, in overcrowded homes or on a waiting list, and at how best to deal with the situation. I fully applaud what the Government are doing and the way we are dealing with what we inherited—[Interruption.] I am sorry that the hon. Member for Rhondda is laughing at the situation, because we are picking up many of the problems left behind by him and his party.

amendment of the law

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 25th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

I will start by drawing attention to the question that I asked the shadow Secretary of State. I notice that she did not deny saying that she wanted to reverse all the changes that the Government have made—[Interruption.] Well, according to the well-known Guido Fawkes website, with which I believe one or two Members are familiar—[Laughter.] If she did not say it, then she should deny it. At a meeting of Christians on the Left, she said:

“It will be much better if we can say that all of the changes that the Government have introduced we can reverse and all benefits can be universal.”

If she did not say that, she should just say so. I will take her intervention. She should deny that she said it. Given that she has not taken the opportunity to deny it, we will know when she leads her party into the Lobby to support our benefit cap that it is a mirage to fool the voters. If Labour ever gets its hands on the tiller, it will increase welfare spending and it will not help people into work.

Let me take the hon. Lady squarely on to the cost of living agenda and her allegation that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor said nothing about it. That is complete and utter nonsense. This morning, the rate of inflation fell according to the consumer prices index and the retail prices index. CPI inflation is at its lowest level for four years.

On jobs, unemployment is continuing to fall. When Labour was in power between 2003 and 2008, when the economy was creating jobs, 90% of those jobs were going to foreign nationals. That provoked the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), to say that there should be

“British jobs for British workers”,

but he had no idea what to do about it. I am very proud, as should be the Secretary of State and the Home Secretary, that since this Government have been in power, because of our welfare, immigration and skills reforms, more than 75% of the 1.3 million net new jobs have gone to British citizens. The British public will be very supportive of that. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) keeps chuntering, but he should listen. More than three quarters of the 1.3 million net new jobs have gone to British citizens. That is a record of which I am very proud.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

When the hon. Gentleman was Immigration Minister, he said at the Dispatch Box time and again that net migration was falling. Actually, it rose by a third in the year in which he was Minister.

[Mr Harper]

I have been very clear that net migration from outside the EU is falling, but that it is going up from inside the EU. That is why we will renegotiate and put the terms to a referendum. We trust the British people with that decision—something that the hon. Gentleman’s party is not prepared to do.

One of the most important things that we have done on the cost of living is to enable interest rates to stay low. That means that one of the largest costs for any family—their mortgage—has stayed at a very low rate. That has been incredibly important and the Labour party would put it at risk.

Inherited Social Housing Tenancies

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 24th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if he will make a statement regarding the exemption of those who have inherited social housing tenancies from paying the under-occupancy charge.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Esther McVey)]

The issue raised by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) is not a new matter, but is part of the 1996 provisions which impacted on the spare room subsidy legislation 2012, and which we have debated in the House before. Upon investigation early in the year, it would appear that some claimants have been unintentionally protected from the effects of the removal of the spare room subsidy, including those who have been in receipt of continuous housing benefit since 1 January 1996 and who have lived in the same property since that date unless the move was due to natural disaster such as fire and flood. There is a grace period of four weeks, or 52 weeks if the claimant or their partner is a welfare to work beneficiary. For example, housing benefit would be classed as continuous if the break is fewer than four weeks, or 52 weeks for a welfare to work beneficiary. Where a claimant dies, the partner or an adult child can inherit the protection, but it must be in respect of the same dwelling and they must qualify for housing benefit.

The issue of the inheritance of housing benefit has always formed part of the understanding of what the loophole meant, and this was part of the guidance issued to local authorities a few weeks ago. The loophole derives from a very narrow but complex set of regulations dating back to 1 January 1996, when the local reference rent rules were introduced. In January 1996, transitional protection was offered to existing claimants, which could, and still can, be inherited if the claimant dies: for example, by a partner or, where there is no partner, by an adult child. The protection applies only in respect of the same dwelling—therefore, partners or adult children must continue to live in that property—and only if they qualify for housing benefit. This protection ends if housing benefit ceased or they moved address.

With hindsight, the protection offered by the regulations could have been time limited. Because it was not, it has lain dormant for 17 years, the effect being that it has now unintentionally been applied to a group of people who were not financially affected by the local reference rent rules. During February’s debate, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley), who was Secretary of State at the time the regulations were introduced, clearly stated that this exemption was never intended to come into force.

This matter was fully debated, and voted on, on 26 February 2014, to approve amended regulations to close the loophole. Clearly, the House has already spoken on this issue, and guidance was sent out a few weeks ago to inform local authorities. I am pleased to announce that most local authorities are following that guidance and delivering this policy.

[Chris Bryant]

That was all very interesting but not to the point, because this is actually about inherited social housing tenancies. The Minister just said that this only applied to the partner or the adult child of somebody who had been holding the tenancy, but in her advice to local authorities of January this year, she included the following highly ambiguous footnote:

“it may be the case”—

only may—

“that the transitional protection has been inherited by a claimant and if so they should be treated the same.”

Yet a separate e-mail from the Department for Work and Pensions includes

“any member of the claimant’s family”

and says,

“if the claimant is a member of a polygamous marriage”—

I am not making this up; this is actually what the Minister has written—

“any partners of his and any child or young person for whom he or a partner is responsible”,

a much bigger number, would be included.

In what circumstances does a tenant inherit the right to be exempted? Does that apply to any member of the claimant’s family or specifically just a partner, as the Minister referred to? How many people does that apply to now? What is the total cost of repayments of these illegal charges? How many people who have received refunds for being wrongly charged the bedroom tax have also received discretionary housing payments, and will they have to pay them back? The DWP advice suggests that in assessing whether someone is exempted, local authorities should

“err on the side of caution”.

What on earth does that mean: err on the side of caution to exempt, or not to exempt?

The bedroom tax always had the air of a policy dreamt up in an ivory tower. I know the Minister would love to put this sorry saga behind her, but she should know that before absolution there always has to be confession. So will she now confess that the bedroom tax has been a fiasco from the beginning, that the figures she has given the House were simply plucked out of the air, and that far more than 5,000 people will be affected? Should she not just repeal the bedroom tax? Because if she won’t, we will.

[Esther McVey]

It is clear that the hon. Gentleman was not listening to the statement that I made and did not understand what the inheritance was or what he was voting for on 26 February. Obviously, we do not necessarily want to have to put this policy in place. It is something that we are having to deliver—

[Chris Bryant]

It is your mistake.

[Esther McVey]

No. It is something we are having to deliver because of what we inherited from the previous Government, including a benefit, the cost of which had doubled in 10 years, and a policy that had left nearly 2 million people on housing waiting lists and 400,000 in overcrowded houses. It was a skewed policy under which people living in private rented accommodation could have their spare room subsidy removed but people who lived in the social rented sector could not. And as for people giving out wrong numbers, I would remind the hon. Gentleman that, when he plucked numbers from the air in the last debate, St Helens said that he had got his numbers wrong. Now, in response to his citing a figure of 2,100 cases, Birmingham has put up on its website this statement:

“We haven’t finished identifying them at Birmingham so can’t give you an exact number, but the number of possible cases has dropped substantially below the 2,100 that was reported in the papers”.

We have trebled the discretionary housing payments. We have also said that we will cover the differences involved for people who are exempt and that we will help local authorities with the administration charges. We have answered these points and we have voted on them. I suggest that the hon. Gentleman look again at the debate we had on 26 February.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Vaizey]

I am pleased to tell my hon. Friend that more than £5 million has been set aside to enable secondary schools to visit battlefield sites. Over the course of four years, every secondary school in the United Kingdom will be able to send at least two pupils to visit the battlefields of world war one.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

May I urge the Minister to think carefully about the contribution that Members of this House and of the other House made to the first world war? On 6 November 1914, Arthur O’Neill, a Member of this House, was killed at Klein Zillebeke while on active service. Four days later, Henry Parnell, a Member of the other House, and Bernard Gordon-Lennox had also been killed. They have a war grave at Klein Zillebeke. Would it not be a good idea to commemorate them in Belgium? Perhaps the Minister could mention this to any important Belgian visitors who might be coming here today.

[Mr Vaizey]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valuable point. It is important that we recognise the contribution to world war one made over a wide range by many different groups. Recognising the contribution made by hon. Members is particularly apposite.

Housing Benefit

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Wednesday 26th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lilley]

The policy is about making better use of a housing stock that is in very short supply.

My friend pointed out that hundreds of thousands of people are registered: last year, about 40,000 swaps were arranged; this year, the number arranged on the site has increased by 23%. I went to my local authority to find out its figures. Some 500 or more people registered as council tenants in St Albans are seeking to move, of whom 260 are seeking larger properties, while only 62 are seeking to downsize. I therefore ask Opposition Members to go to their local authorities and find out the actual figures.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

We have.

--- Later in debate ---

[Heather Wheeler]

That is the whole point: it was not overnight; there was at least two years’ notice. [Laughter.] Opposition Members may laugh, but in two years more than 140 one and two-bedroom units have been built in South Derbyshire. What, my friends, were Opposition Members doing to look after their so-called vulnerable people?

[Chris Bryant]

I presume that the hon. Lady is going to vote with the Government to close the loophole. I presume she will only do that—or else she would think herself to be cruel—if she knows how many people she will be adding to the list of those affected by the bedroom tax. Does she know that number for her own constituency? Does she know the number for the country? [Interruption.] I do know the number.

[Heather Wheeler]

I am very glad the hon. Gentleman knows the number for both; I am sure he is going to tell everybody. However, the most important thing today is that there is an anachronism. Opposition Members are living in the old days. When will Opposition Members wake up to see that there is massive overcrowding and that we need a massive new building programme? As ever, they are living in the old days and are doing nothing about looking after the most vulnerable people. The Opposition are living in fantasy land and that will not look after the most vulnerable people. They do not deal with the real problems in society: overcrowding; people who have been waiting and waiting to get decent housing; and people who have been on housing benefit for goodness knows how long because they have been brought up to stay in that sort of society. That is not good enough. That is not the society we want to have in the future. I see those on the Opposition Front Bench hanging their heads in shame. I hope the cameras can get that, because that is the truth of where we are.

--- Later in debate ---

[Esther McVey]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving me the opportunity to answer that question. I looked into the freedom of information request and the numbers that had been obtained, and I was assured categorically that there was no way the Opposition’s figures could add up regarding claimants who were continuously on benefits while remaining in the same accommodation. When I spoke to various housing associations and local authorities, they were somewhat surprised, because they had given the numbers of people who might be affected and the numbers of cases they were still investigating, but the Opposition had added them together to try to multiply the numbers. When we answered the question on the numbers, the figure we gave at that time—5,000—was the best we could do. It is incorrect to say that the Opposition have those numbers; that is not the case.

[Chris Bryant]

Will the Minister give way?

[Esther McVey]

I will indeed give way, to hear some more information sprung from nowhere. Go on!

[Chris Bryant]

No, this is not information sprung from nowhere; it is direct questions to local authorities under the freedom of information legislation. A classic instance of this is to be found in the Minister’s own backyard: there are 600 cases in the Wirral. If she does not know the numbers—which is effectively what she is saying—is she not simply seeking to change the law on the basis of cruelty?