Transforming Rehabilitation

Debate between Lord Grayling and Helen Goodman

Wednesday 9th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I can give my hon. Friend an assurance that I will not be rewarding people for someone burgling a few houses rather than a lot of houses.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

The moment at which the probation service has been commended for its effective performance is an odd one for the Secretary of State to choose to put his foot on the accelerator. What is his estimate of the number of probation officers who will be made redundant, what is the anticipated cost of that, and does he have an agreed budget for it from the Treasury?

[Chris Grayling]

I do not expect this to lead to wholesale redundancies in the probation service. It certainly means a new world for many people in the probation service in being part of the new organisations, new social enterprises and new consortia that will deliver the services. Yes, of course there will be some changes, but this does not involve, suddenly and instantly, mass redundancies in the probation service—that would not be right.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Grayling and Helen Goodman

Tuesday 18th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I absolutely believe that a householder who finds themselves in the unbelievably stressful situation of facing a violent intruder should believe that the law is on their side. I give my hon. Friend an assurance that I will make sure that that happens.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

18. If he will assess the effectiveness of the fitness tests that prisoner officers are required to take.

Atos Healthcare

Debate between Lord Grayling and Helen Goodman

Tuesday 4th September 2012 Westminster Hall

[Chris Grayling]

If people can make a return to work, even if it is a different form of work from what they were able to do before their health condition arose, that is better for them than spending the rest of their life on benefits. That is the principle that we are working towards.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

rose—

[Chris Grayling]

I will briefly give way once, but that is all.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Goodman]

If the Minister has read the current descriptors, will he explain what kind of work a person could do when their engaging in social contact with someone unfamiliar is always precluded due to difficulty relating to others? There are those who have reduced awareness of everyday hazards, which means that they face significant risk of injury to themselves or others, and those who are at risk of loss of control leading to extensive evacuation of their bowel and bladder. What work can these people do?

[Chris Grayling]

Let me pick up on that point straight off. It is all well and good for Opposition Members to stand up and rail about the system, but it is a system that was created by Labour four years ago when they were in government, and it is a system that we have consistently tried to improve.

Let me be absolutely clear. I put it on record that this is not a financial exercise. There are no targets attached to the reassessment of people on incapacity benefit—[Interruption.] The assessment that is in place for new claimants for employment and support allowance—

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Grayling and Helen Goodman

Monday 25th June 2012 Commons Chamber

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

We are committed to supporting people who are diagnosed with cancer in the most sensitive, fair and appropriate way. We are currently analysing responses from our informal consultation on the effects of cancer treatment and will publish a consultation response later in the summer. However, we have already put in place changes that have increased the range of cancer patients who receive ongoing unconditional support.

[Helen Goodman]

My constituent was treated for breast cancer in July 2010. She was deemed fit for work by Atos before the post-op results were received. The tribunal found in her favour and awarded her employment and support allowance in January 2012. However, her ESA entitlement was stopped in April because of the introduction of the Government’s 365 day rule. She was reassessed in May 2012 and found fit for work again. Her employer has held her job open but cannot re-employ her until she is deemed fit for work by her doctor. This is obviously extremely bad for her health. Will the Minister agree to meet me about this case?

[Chris Grayling]

It is obviously very difficult to talk about an individual case, and I am afraid that I make it a matter of policy that Ministers do not become involved in individual cases. What I would say is that it is extremely important that we provide support for all cancer sufferers who can potentially return to work to do so at the earliest opportunity. That is much better for them than being stuck at home on benefits.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Grayling and Helen Goodman

Monday 19th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We inherited from the previous Government a system in which there are tangible disincentives to move back into work. When people do the right thing and move back into work, they often face penal rates at which they lose the money they are earning, either through loss of benefits or through increased taxation. That must change if we are to create a genuine incentive for people to do the right thing and return to the workplace.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

The Government have already cut the future jobs fund, child tax credits and housing benefit, which will increase child poverty in two or three years’ time. Will the Minister tell us whether, in addition to that, his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has proposed means-testing child benefit?

[Chris Grayling]

I have no intention of taking any lessons from the previous Government on child poverty—[Hon. Members: “Answer the question.”] The Labour party promised to halve child poverty by 2010, but missed that target by 1 million children. Its failure on child poverty was lamentable. By contrast, this Government will take steps over the next few years to reduce child poverty and to ensure that we do the right thing by the people in this country who are at the bottom end of the income scale.

Tackling Poverty in the UK

Debate between Lord Grayling and Helen Goodman

Thursday 10th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman]

I certainly do; my hon. Friend anticipates one of the points that I was going to make.

As I was saying, the omens are not good, and I fear that the rhetoric is not matched by the reality. Only this morning, the independent Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development forecast a rise in unemployment to almost 3 million as public sector workers, mainly women and the low-paid, are thrown on to the dole. In fact, it is difficult to see exactly what the strategy of Her Majesty’s Government is. So far, the two coalition partners can agree on getting rid of the child trust fund and the future jobs fund, but what will be the effect of those cuts? The child trust fund was the first serious attempt to tackle intergenerational poverty by enabling low-income families to build up assets for their children. As the Minister said, it is vital to encourage a culture of savings, and it was designed to do precisely that, but it is going to go.

The coalition Government were also able to agree to cut the future jobs fund, despite the fact that before the election both coalition parties said they would continue it. That means that 80,000 young people will lose their chances of work this year, and perhaps 150,000 next year. The whole reason why we introduced the fund was that we saw the scarring effects of youth unemployment in the 1980s and ’90s. Because we took measures over the past 18 months during the recession, long-term youth unemployment is now one tenth of the level that it was then. However, the coalition parties have clearly learned nothing and care less. One must ask oneself why that is, so let us examine where the cuts in the future jobs fund will fall most heavily—the west midlands, the north-west, Wales and Scotland. The future jobs fund is about real jobs.

[Chris Grayling]

May I point out to the hon. Lady how proud I am to have many new colleagues on our Benches from the west midlands, the north-west, Wales and so on? Will she confirm to the House that a couple of weeks ago, this Administration announced tens of thousands of new apprenticeships, which are likely to have a much longer-lasting impact on securing proper careers for the future for young people?

[Helen Goodman]

Of course Members from the coalition parties could be elected in those areas, given that they did not say before the election that they would cut the future jobs fund. They promised that they would continue it, and now they have cut it. That is the problem. I suspect that the Government’s real agenda is to make young people do the same work that they were doing under the future jobs fund, but whereas everybody was paid at least the minimum wage through that fund, under the schemes that the Minister and the Government are proposing they will have to live on benefits. What will that do for poverty levels, and where does it leave the Liberal Democrats’ commitment to raise the minimum wage for people under the age of 24?

It is ironic that the one thing the partners in the coalition really cannot agree about is the role of the family. The Tories want to reintroduce the married couples allowance, but that is one of the few matters on which the coalition agreement allows the Liberal Democrats to abstain. Who will benefit from it? Not the widow, the abandoned mother or the woman who has left her husband because of domestic violence. The Liberal Democrats should have the courage of their convictions, and they should vote against it. It is a wholly regressive and retrograde step. As the Deputy Prime Minister said during the election campaign, it is

“a throwback to the Edwardian era”

and “patronising drivel”.

The Secretary of State, who unfortunately is no longer in his place, revealed on 27 May that he was still looking to the Treasury for an extra £3 billion to reform the benefits system. The coalition agreement states that

“initial investment delivers later savings through lower benefit expenditure…based upon the DEL/AME switch”—

the departmental expenditure limits/annually managed expenditure switch. That is obviously based on the work of the Centre for Social Justice, which we examined in some detail when we took evidence on the Child Poverty Bill. The Secretary of State even seemed to be laying his job on the line later on 27 May when he said that he had not taken the job to be a “cheeseparer”, and stated:

“If somebody tells me I have to do something different then I won’t be here any longer.”

I suspect that the Chancellor of the Exchequer may be telling him to do something different right now, because he says that tackling the deficit is the priority. If Ministers in the Department for Work and Pensions can persuade the Treasury that the extra £3 billion is the goose that will lay the golden egg, we shall be extremely surprised.

A further complication in trying to tease out the Government’s strategy is that No. 10 has appointed my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field). We have not yet seen his terms of reference—I do not know whether they are to think the unthinkable—but there seems to be something strangely familiar about the situation. Last Saturday The Guardian said that he was going to look again at the definition of poverty. That really would be unthinkable. What is the point of it?