European Union (Approvals) Bill [Lords]

Chris Heaton-Harris Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

I hope not to detain the House for long, but I wish to make a couple of points.

First, in answer to the hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds), we are having this debate because we foresaw, during the passage of the European Union Act 2011, issues that might or might not be controversial but that would be worthy of proper scrutiny on the Floor of the House. We rarely divided on that Bill on the Floor of the House because we wanted to ensure proper scrutiny of things being done in our name at the EU level. In today’s Bill we see the provisions of the 2011 Act coming through. On the comparison with tax credits, I understand where he is coming from, but it could be argued that previous changes to tax credits have been introduced under statutory instruments. However, we foresaw this coming, so we amended the European Union Act, as it was then, to make sure that we could scrutinise these sorts of matters on the Floor of the House. These two examples are not the world’s most exciting, but we will see more and more such measures coming forward, and we will have more and more time to talk about them.

I have visited Macedonia and I am a fan of the country. Having been a Member of the European Parliament, I have seen how a neighbouring country has done everything it can to stop the Macedonian accession to the European Union, and I have seen what Macedonia itself has achieved, taking massive strides forward towards EU membership. I am pleased that Macedonia has been able to become an observer in the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights.

My only concern relating to the Bill and Macedonian entry is that the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights has come out of the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, which had unbelievably difficult financial and administrative problems in the past. I would like to check with the Minister every now and again to ensure that the past problems of that organisation—which were responsible, among other things, for its name change—have been completely turned around so that the agency does what it is meant to do, without duplicating other problems.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend define “observer” for me? Does it mean the EU observes Macedonia or Macedonia observes the EU in respect of human rights, for example? I would like to know exactly what “observer” means.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

It is a bit of both. The agency has the following main tasks:

“to collect, analyse and disseminate…objective, reliable and comparative information”

related to the situation of fundamental rights in the EU;

“to formulate and publish conclusions and opinions on specific thematic topics…on its own initiative or at the request of the European Parliament, the Council or the Commission”;

and it is also about

“the promotion of dialogue with civil society…to raise public awareness of fundamental rights”.

A debate is going on in this country about where those rights should lie, what sort of legislation should exist in relation to them and who should police them. Macedonia has had that debate in its own Parliament, has applied to join this agency and is willing to pay appropriations to it. I do not see why we should step in its way. As I have said, there have been problems with the agency in the past, but it serves an important function in that member states’ voting rights could be suspended, based on the findings of any of its reports. The agency has teeth in no uncertain terms, and it has a decent operating budget of over €20 million a year. Macedonia has made its own choice, and it is right for it to go down that route if it chooses to do so.

I want to speak briefly about the draft decision on a tripartite social summit for growth and employment. There is a new Council decision, following Lisbon, that allows the number of meetings to be increased from one to two a year, and allows the President of the European Council to attend. The European Commission is allowed to host and facilitate meetings, so there should not be too much of a cost to it. My questions are more about the direction of travel of this organisation, its duplication, its purpose in being and whether we can raise questions about what it does.

This is not the European Economic and Social Committee, whose abolition I have called for in the past because of the huge costs for members belonging to one of the three groups of employers, employees and various other interests. The employers group comprises businessmen, people from certain business lobbies; the workers group comprises members from 80 trade unions mostly affiliated to the European Trade Union Confederation; while the third group is made up of lobbies from civil society. Most of those groups are paid for by the European Commission to lobby it in different ways to get the Commission to do more. Many European countries have a national version. However, the organisation I am talking about is not that. It is a separate beast.

One important question is who are the EU’s social partners? A list of social partners organisations consulted under article 154 of the treaty of the functioning of the European Union includes Business Europe. Business Europe is quite an interesting organisation. Unsurprisingly, it has a particular view on the referendum we might be having here. It gets a small sum of money, nearly €457,000, as payment under a grant received for a project running over a couple of years, of which the total budgeted cost was €1.2 million. The members of Business Europe include our CBI—it is one of the ways in which the UK CBI receives some money from the European Union. It includes other organisations such as the European Trade Union Confederation, which I mentioned previously and which received €4 million from European institutions, spending over €1 million lobbying the EU.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Given the sums that the hon. Gentleman mentions, is it not possible that these organisations will be more kindly disposed towards the EU—simply because they have received such substantial sums?

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I would like to think that they would not be. If I were a leading light in the CBI or the ETUC, I would want to make sure of being in a position whereby I would not be accused of being biased in one way or the other. Receiving money from the European Commission that is then spent lobbying the EU to do things—whether it be business organisations lobbying for liberalisation or trade union organisations lobbying for workers’ rights or whatever—seems almost like manufacturing a market in this area.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Just recently, there has been something of a controversy about the BBC receiving some millions of pounds from the European Union for educational purposes—no doubt educating us all about the wonders of the EU. Does the hon. Gentleman not think that if organisations that are supposed to be independent and impartial take large sums of money from the EU, it might have some influence on them?

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

Again, I would like to think not. I follow what the hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friends have been doing on the European Scrutiny Committee. There has been a long and ongoing dialogue with the BBC, as I know because I was a member of the Committee over the last five years running up to the mandate of this Parliament. I hesitate to look in the direction of my Scottish National party colleagues, because I have a feeling they might have a view on partiality and the BBC when it comes to certain matters.

[Alex Salmond (Gordon) (SNP)]

Listening to the hon. Gentleman, I am wondering whether the BBC finds it more difficult when an organisation such as the European Commission gives it money or, in respect of human rights, when money is taken away, as is being done by the UK Government?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)]

Order. In talking about the BBC, we are straying quite far from debating a narrow Bill.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

Forgive me, Madam Deputy Speaker, as I did rather provoke reaction from my SNP colleagues, because I wanted to prove the point that when questions are raised about the partiality of an organisation, either through its funding or its actions, it could devalue that organisation’s input into something important, such as a European referendum.

Let me return to the point about who our EU social partners are in this dialogue that we are facilitating through the Bill. As I have said, in 2014 the European Trade Union Confederation received €4 million from EU institutions and spent more than €1 million of that money lobbying those same EU institutions on legislation. In 2013 the CEEP—the European Centre of Employers and Enterprises providing Public Services—spent €120,000 lobbying the European Union and received €155,000 from the EU’s directorate-general for employment.

I question the added value of the dialogue at the tripartite social summit for growth and employment. Like many things in the European Union, its title is motherhood and apple pie. Who could possibly be against a tripartite social summit for growth and employment? However, if it delivers very little and if the only people who attend it and talk to the European Commission are actually paid by the Commission to do so, that will be a significant issue because the conversation will simply go round in ever-decreasing circles.

The EU social partners have agreed to a number of things in the recent past, and they wish to discuss important matters. They have agreed to

“negotiate an autonomous framework agreement on active ageing and an inter-generational approach”.

That is obviously something we need to discuss at a national level, not to mention the European level. They have also agreed to

“step up efforts to improve the implementation of their autonomous framework agreements, with a specific focus on the 8-10 Member States where the implementation has been identified as insufficient”.

This group is going to lobby for more European regulation and harsher implementation of directives.

The social partners’ work programme also notes that they have agreed to

“highlight the importance of more public and private investments”—

I imagine that Labour Members would like to have a conversation about that, especially given their new leadership—

“in order to reach an optimal growth, to boost job creation and to revive EU industrial base”.

The joint working programme also wants to “prepare joint conclusions” on things that we would all wish to see, including

“promoting better reconciliation of work, private and family life and gender equality to reduce the gender pay gap”.

I cannot believe that any Member of this House would not want to achieve that. However, given that the European Commission pays indirectly for this group of people to turn up once every six months to talk about these things, and given that they have already done so for quite some time without any concrete achievements—in fact, some of those ideals may have gone into reverse during that time—perhaps we should question the validity of supporting such a social summit for growth and employment.

Another of the work programme objectives—this did not become controversial until quite recently—is to

“contribute to the efforts of the EU institutions to develop a mobility package, to address loopholes and enforcement issues on worker mobility and to promote mobility of apprenticeships.”

This country is currently having a debate about mobility and, indeed, the freedom of movement of workers and others. It is interesting that we are promoting such a debate—our European partners are also having a big debate on the very same issue—while at the same time funding a summit of the worthy and the good to discuss the same thing.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

The great constitutionalist, Walter Bagehot, said that there are two parts to the constitution: the decorative and the effective. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the body under discussion is one of the more decorative rather than effective parts of the EU constitution?

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I probably do, yes. I hate to beat around the bush: I do not think it is worth funding this organisation. It is duplication for duplication’s sake. Given the number of other direct opportunities available to the bodies that will attend the summit to influence the thinking of the European Commission, member states and others, I really do question the value of the group. Obviously, that is why I am on my feet asking the Minister why it is, when we have an opportunity to prevent duplication and to prevent some of the European budget from being spent, we do not actually take it.

I want to ask a number of questions along those lines. Article 152 of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union states that the EU will set up the social dialogue while respecting the autonomy of the organisations, but can those organisations and bodies that attend the summit truly be autonomous when they are funded by the EU? Will they not be a taxpayer-funded echo chamber?

What authority has the EU had until now if the former decision on hosting summits was based on an old article treaty? Article 152 states that the EU should respect the “diversity of national systems”. Given that our national system does not include such summits, can the Government guarantee that the outcome of the meetings will not have an effect on the European Commission’s work programme—in other words, the very programme to which the summit wants to provide input? Is there an estimate of how much the six-monthly meetings will cost, and will the UK choose to host them when it takes over the presidency of the EU in 2017?

The Commission’s directorate-general for employment, social affairs and inclusion has regular dialogue with all the parties that will attend the summit, and there are other EU bodies that do exactly the same thing. When voting on such matters, this place has been almost unanimously in favour of cutting the duplication of European spending. We need to make sure that this country’s massive contribution to the European Commission and Europe is spent more wisely. Given that I have some form in this area—I was a Member of the European Parliament for 10 years and raised many budgetary questions about the issues under discussion—I question the value of approving the Bill.

Housing Costs (Reformed Welfare System)

Chris Heaton-Harris Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to take part in this debate. I am sorry that I missed the first couple of minutes of the speech by the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), because she speaks very sensibly on this issue and many Government Members listen to what she has to say about it. I will pick up on a couple of points she made.

The hon. Lady has spoken in the past about the amount that we spend on housing benefit. It was a matter of concern to us all that the housing benefit budget seemed to be getting out of control in the run-up to the last general election. In fact, the housing benefit bill was forecast to rise over the current Parliament from £21 billion to more than £26 billion. This Government’s reforms have only pegged back that increase by about £2 billion a year, which, given the potential growth in the budget, is not very much at all.

The hon. Lady spoke about how the spare room subsidy has been working in practice. Like the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming), my constituency surgeries were visited by many people when the policy was first mooted, perhaps because they were scared by stories that were being circulated at the time about how it would affect them. There was a general lack of knowledge about discretionary housing payments and who can receive them for. I am pleased that we were able to help every person who came through the door of my constituency surgery advice centre seeking help in that area, and all received discretionary housing payments.

Interestingly, Daventry and District Housing, which serves a huge area of my constituency, saw the policy change coming down the line. It is a good housing association in many ways because it talks to its tenants on a regular basis and gets to know them, and it therefore made sure that they were ready for the change. Most tenants in Daventry and District Housing accommodation knew that the change was coming, and knew that discretionary housing payments were available and how to access them.

I sit on the Public Accounts Committee, which discusses these matters—I will mention the report that the hon. Member for Aberdeen South spoke about in moment—and it is fairly obvious that different parts of the country, different housing associations, and different councils have acted in completely different ways over this change. They have probably acted in their best local interests, which is fine, but it has led to different outcomes in various parts of the country that all have remarkably significant and different pressures on them.

In one of my first years on the Committee, its Chair, the right hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge), took us to see a primary school and surrounding housing estate in her constituency. We had been talking about health and housing inequalities, and the trip was to see how primary education was working. I acknowledge that the pressures on housing in Erith and Thamesmead, or in Barking and Dagenham, are completely different from those in my constituency, and that is why local experts and housing associations in that area know their tenants well.

The interesting background to this debate concerns an area of spending that was constantly growing and needed to be brought under control—however we paint the picture, the Government’s moneybags were not particularly full when they came to office in May 2010, and although they are a bit better now, there are still tough decisions to be made. Such decisions must be based on fairness—I know that some Opposition Members do not consider this measure to be fair at all—and we must consider how we change a policy that is already enacted for those in the private rental housing sector but not for those in the public rental sector.

At this point I should say that I rent out a house. My private property in Lincoln is noted in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and I rent it to a private sector tenant who to my knowledge is not on any type of benefit. There is a proper debate to be had about this issue, which was started in no uncertain terms by the previous Government.

This Government brought forward their proposals with the safety net of discretionary housing payments. I do not want to disagree with the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) because she will know her local area much better than I will, but perhaps I misheard her. She was talking about warrants for evictions, and perhaps she meant from the private rental sector.

[Teresa Pearce]

indicated assent.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

She did. I know from Ministry of Justice figures that warrants for evictions for public sector rental tenants were down over the period in question by 6%. An issue in the private rental sector might well need to be addressed, and that is probably in the south-east of the country rather than elsewhere, given the housing pressures that London might have.

My concern was the treatment of carers and those who are disabled. As the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley said, it would have been wonderful to exempt everybody from the change, but it was impossible to do so, and therefore discretionary housing payments were introduced. In my experience in my constituency, DHP has been granted for disability and caring in every single case it has been asked for. I pay tribute to Daventry and District Housing, the citizens advice bureau and the local council for the way in which they have dealt with those cases. The patch—I admit that it is a patch, and that I would much rather have seen it done in a much more solid way—seems to work. The extension of the term of DHP seems to have given people a better sense that they will be able to live in their property for a long period.

I conclude with comments on the Public Accounts Committee report on universal credit, which was published only a couple of weeks ago, and which the hon. Member for Aberdeen South mentioned. As she outlined, an interesting part of universal credit and one of the benefits that it will eventually wrap in—for many new claimants, that has started—is housing benefit. Housing associations up and down the country have had concerns about how that might affect them and how they will get their rents from tenants. However, the report shows how a change in the Department for Work and Pensions has been introduced—it has been seen as controversial by many, although a universal credit that aims to get as many people as possible into work and to make work pay better than benefits ever will is in fact policy on both sides of the House—how the programme has improved things and how it is now beginning to deliver what it was meant to deliver, and on scale across the country.

The report was groundbreaking in many ways. The Public Accounts Committee is very critical of all Departments that come before us where money is spent. We raised some issues, as detailed by the hon. Member for Aberdeen South, but if Members read the report they will see for themselves that we are much more comfortable with how the universal credit programme is going—that it is now delivering on scale and will deliver the savings expected. No matter on which side of the House hon. Members sit, they will welcome it in future, because it does exactly what it says on the tin.

The interesting paragraph is paragraph 6. The hon. Lady mentioned the potential problems of paying housing benefit elements of universal credit directly to claimants—the question was whether housing associations and others could maintain their incomes. I know from initial reports that her statistics are correct, but I would like to hear from the Minister, because I am pretty sure that new stats prove that there is not as much of a problem as she says.

[John Hemming]

rose—

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I had better sit down and shut up, otherwise I will get the stare from Madam Deputy Speaker, which I never want to receive.

Things are improving. We would expect that because when something changes, there is always upset at the beginning. Things are on the right track, but I would like to hear about it from the Minister.

UK Poverty

Chris Heaton-Harris Excerpts

Wednesday 4th February 2015 Westminster Hall

[Lisa Nandy]

At the very least, Baroness Jenkin took an interest in the issue, which is more than I can say for the Prime Minister or most of his Front-Bench colleagues. But I would say that that remark came in the context of a stream of remarks made by different Government members and Back Benchers from the hon. Lady’s own party that are hugely offensive to people who are stuck in the position I have described and are trying their best, only to find that the Government are not doing the same.

The head teacher of a school in the same area as the family whose £20 gas card was immediately eaten up by debt got in touch with me to say that the school is now having to use the pupil premium to employ learning mentors not to support children in the classroom but to go to family homes to try to sort out problems with vermin, lack of electricity and all the other things those families are not able to deal with themselves, or to find the families food or refer them to food banks. The former Secretary of State for Education, the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), said in 2013 that those families were

“not best able to manage their finances.” —[Official Report, 9 September 2013; Vol. 567, c. 681.]

That beggars belief. He was the Government Minister responsible for child welfare at the time; the fact that he even thinks that those families have finances to manage absolutely beggars belief.

The reality is that children and young people have been among the hardest hit. Barnardo’s got in touch with me when it saw I had secured this debate to tell me that increasingly it sees numbers of families in its projects who are reliant on food banks because their income is not keeping pace with the cost of living. What a waste that is. I know Barnardo’s really well. I used to work for the Children’s Society and worked closely with Barnardo’s on some of its projects for young people across the country. Barnardo’s unlocks the talent of children and young people, and helps them to develop, thrive and use their energies, passion and commitment in their local communities. Instead, in 2015, in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, it is diverting its resources to simply feeding and clothing our children.

Barnardo’s told me that the sanctions regime had had a particular impact on young people, especially care leavers, young homeless teenagers and teenage parents—arguably, those young people to whom, as a society, we owe the biggest responsibility. That is especially the case for young people leaving care: we are their corporate parent and hold responsibility for them. Homeless Link told me that 58% of young people seeking help because of sanctions have a mental health problem or other problem. Nationally, 42% of all sanctions relating to JSA affect 18 to 24-year-olds, including over 1,000 young people in my town.

That generation’s wages have fallen by 10% since this Government came to power. Those young people have lost the education maintenance allowance and the future jobs fund. They have seen tuition fees hiked to £9,000 a year and a record 1 million are out of work, yet their Prime Minister has the nerve to tell them that they should be “earning or learning” or they will lose their benefits. How can they? That is my question.

Barnardo’s told me about a young mum who was sanctioned for six weeks because she was attending a school appointment about her child’s behaviour. After she turned to a loan shark, her children, who were desperate to help, went shoplifting to feed the family. Do Ministers have any idea of the desperation that their policies are causing? A local police officer said to me that

“we used to find kids nicking stuff to sell but nowadays it’s more likely to be bread.”

Police forces in Lancaster, Cleveland, Northumbria and my own area of Greater Manchester have said that food and grocery thefts are on the rise. The local chamber of commerce said

“this crisis has been…caused by excessive debt.”

To echo the words of UNICEF:

“It is no accident…It’s possible to make better choices than we’ve made.”

Under the previous Government the number of children in poverty fell by 1.1 million—I know that because I was working with children and young people in the voluntary sector at the time. It also fell, as Ministers are fond of telling us, by 300,000 in the first year of this Government, but please let us not pretend that we do not understand that those figures lag two years behind Government actions.

There is no longer any twisting the facts. Child poverty is widely predicted to rise by 2020 on relative and absolute measures—it does not matter that the Government have made all of us poorer, because poverty is still on the rise. The latest estimates show an increase of half a million children living in relative poverty under this Government and 800,000 more in absolute poverty. None of the figures takes into account rising housing costs. It is not just the lack of material means, but the gnawing anxiety that goes with waking up every day, not having enough food to eat and not knowing what will happen and what the future holds. If Government policy does not change course, the Institute for Fiscal Studies says that child poverty will have doubled between 2010 and 2020. The Welfare Benefits Up-rating Act 2013 alone could push 200,000 more children into poverty.

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

I very much appreciate the list of anecdotes that the hon. Lady has given about people who have fallen on really hard times. There is a need for Government to act in certain ways, but surely she must understand that some responsibility lies at the door of the previous Government who caused the 7% drop in GDP and the massive deficit that the Government are trying to correct. Unfortunately, because of their mistakes, tough decisions have to be taken, but I am yet to hear anything from her about how more money can be made available from some sort of magic money tree somewhere that would allow her to reverse the decisions that the Government have taken.

[Lisa Nandy]

That would carry more weight if the Government had managed to do anything like balance the books in the past few years, but the economic stupidity of this sort of policy is clear. In constituencies such as mine, when money is taken out of the pockets of the poorest, they will not spend in local shops and businesses. We have seen exactly what happens in that case: shops and businesses lose trade, then staff, and the vicious cycle continues. It sounds like the hon. Gentleman has just offered the best possible defence of trying to balance the books off the backs of the poorest.

There is an alternative. Germany, Poland, Canada and Australia have all seen child poverty fall in the past four years. The UK is one of only four countries where there has been an unprecedented increase in material deprivation among children. The truth is that those are political choices. I will also say to the hon. Gentleman that we were all present for the 2012 Budget, which had devastating effects in communities such as mine. That Budget, which slashed tax credits and benefits in real terms for people who were in or out of work—some of the poorest people in the country—also handed a tax cut worth nearly £2,000 a week to people who earn more than £1 million a year. Those are political choices and to pretend otherwise is to deny the facts.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way a second time. I guess there will always be a difference in politics between the two sides in this debate—I think that 1% of people paying 30% of income tax is actually quite a good deal for 99% of people, but let us put that to one side. What alternative is she offering? How will she pay for any of the reverses in policy that she is asking for? There has been no suggestion at all. Every time that the Opposition find an imaginary pot of money, whether it be from stopping tax avoidance in some scheme or whatever, they spend it 12 or 13 times. Give us one single way in which the Opposition will find money to spend on these schemes, please.

[Lisa Nandy]

I will give the hon. Gentleman not one, but several. First, put money back into the pockets of the poorest, because they will spend that money and the economy will grow. That means stamping out things such as zero-hours contracts that exploit people in the ways that I described. Secondly, raise the minimum wage, which will give people greater security in their homes—jobs that pay the rent and cover travel costs.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

That is all money out and no money in.

[Lisa Nandy]

That is not money out. I will explain this to the hon. Gentleman, because he obviously needs to understand but does not at present. In this country we are unique in having major structural problems in our economy, which means that poverty is higher than in most other countries even before tax and spending decisions are taken into account.

First, it is the Government’s failure not to tackle root causes such as low pay and zero-hours contracts that causes the level of poverty to be so high in the first place. Secondly, because we then need to spend so much money in income transfers to compensate for that, unfair decisions are made that benefit richer people at the expense of poorer people, which compounds the problem. That is why we have had the explosion of food banks in recent years and why, 30 years after the miners’ strike where the community in my constituency had to come together to feed and clothe our children, because of this Government we are having to do that once more.

I will tell the hon. Gentleman this as well: people are not just being caused distress, anguish and despair, but having their health and safety put at risk. On Monday, a paediatrician, Dr Colin Michie, spoke out about the increase in malnutrition-related hospital admissions in children aged under 16. Hospital admissions for malnutrition doubled between 2008 and 2012 and last year 6,520 people—a seven-year high—were admitted to hospital because of that. The Faculty of Public Health’s John Middleton said that food-related ill health was getting worse

“through extreme poverty and the use of food banks”.

People cannot afford good quality food, so malnutrition, rickets and other manifestations of extreme poor diet are becoming apparent. It is almost inconceivable that in this country in 2015 we are seeing the return of Victorian diseases. Hospital admissions for scurvy have doubled under this Government since 2010.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Goodman]

The response that we have had from Ministers and Tory Members today is precisely what the Archbishop of Canterbury describes in the book “On Rock or Sand?” as “wilful blindness”. If we are wilfully blind to the real problems in this country, we will not be able to deal with them. That is the major problem. The Government are responsible for a large number of the measures that have pushed the poorest further down.

What are we going to do instead? My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) pointed out that in-work poverty is now exploding as well. That point is also made in an excellent book by Julia Unwin, which I recommend to all hon. Members. In-work poverty is the new feature of poverty. It is caused by rising prices, a cost of living crisis and falling incomes. The Government will continue on that exploitative path, which will, in fact, increase the benefits bill by £9 billion, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) pointed out this morning. However, this morning the Secretary of State was bragging about something that Barnardo’s has complained to me about, namely the taking of £50 billion from the children of this country during this Parliament.

Hon. Members have asked, “What would Labour do?” I will tell them what Labour will do. The first thing that Labour will do is to abolish the bedroom tax.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

Paid for by?

[Helen Goodman]

Paid for by taxing the hedge funds, as was discussed during Prime Minister’s questions only this lunchtime, when the Prime Minister refused to do that. [Interruption.]

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

Chris Heaton-Harris Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green]

My hon. Friend is right.

As we start the debate this afternoon, let me say that we can send a message of dignity and respect to disabled people in two ways. We can do so by voting for the motion to make it clear that anyone who makes comments that suggest discriminating against disabled people or that demean them should not be in government, least of all in a role in which they make decisions day in, day out that affect disabled people’s lives. We can also show our feelings by the way in which we conduct this debate. The real reason this debate matters so much is that it is an opportunity for us to show disabled people that we understand why Lord Freud’s remarks caused such anger and pain and that we understand what is happening in their lives. Lord Freud’s comments have touched a chord because disabled people are already suffering so much from the policies for which he and his ministerial colleagues are responsible.

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

I think that the hon. Lady is struggling to make her case. Will she explain why, in 2003, the Labour party had a policy to get rid of the minimum wage for people who had mental health problems?

[Kate Green]

That was never our policy. Of course programmes exist to support disabled people who are on benefits to get into therapeutic work, but that is not what the noble Lord Freud was speaking about.

amendment of the law

Chris Heaton-Harris Excerpts

Tuesday 25th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey). I thank him for his valiant attempt to explain his party’s economic policy using real-life examples, but he has to admit that it is a very confused policy. A bit like a chameleon that has fallen into a bag of Smarties, it is changing almost by the day, by the hour. On the Government side of the House, we are waiting to find out what his party will vote for or against in this Budget, with about two hours to go before the vote.

However, the hon. Gentleman identified a really important point, which I would like to come back to. He spoke about the diverse nature of our individual constituencies—Birmingham, Erdington and mine of Daventry. Maybe, just maybe—this follows points made in speeches from Opposition Members—we are all missing a trick in trying to tackle some of the long-term unemployment problems our country faces.

However, I start by saying that this is a very good Budget. A record number of people are now in work. The pace of net job creation under this Government has been three times faster than in any other recovery on record. Unemployment figures for March show a 20% fall in the claimant count in just one year and the fastest fall in the youth claimant count since 1997. That is something we should all be able to welcome. The Office for Budget Responsibility forecast 1.5 million more jobs over the next five years. Again, that is something we can all welcome. There are a record number of women in work, and for the first time in 35 years we have a higher employment rate than the United States of America.

There are good measures in the Budget for our exporters and good financial support to put them on an even keel with their international competitors. We are lifting people out of paying tax—3 million by 2015. So many of them will be better off by £800 each year because of the changes in the tax system. There are 450,000 fewer workless households, which is surely something to celebrate. It might not be enough, but it is something to be pleased about.

We have a fantastic new policy for pensions. We have introduced the workplace pension, the single-tier pension and now the change in policy for annuities will allow people to help shape their futures as they choose, with their own money. Three quarters of a million more people are in full-time work—that is something to celebrate—and 300,000 more people are in part-time work.

I hope that Opposition Members will stop their attack on part-time work, because it is important for all sorts of sectors in the economy, and indeed all types of people, whether students in the summer or mothers returning to work after having children. Part-time work is fundamentally important in helping to drive our economy.

Like the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington, I am unsure about zero-hours contracts, having heard good and bad stories about them. However, I remind him that he was the head of a trade union that pushed for a European measure that led to less flexibility in our work force here in the United Kingdom. Indeed, a Labour Secretary of State went to the European Parliament to plead for the United Kingdom to be allowed more flexibility. I suggest that the lack of flexibility in our employment market might have led businesses to look around for something that would allow greater flexibility, and that seems to be zero-hours contracts.

[Jack Dromey]

I take it that the hon. Gentleman is referring to the agency workers directive.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

That was one of them, yes.

[Jack Dromey]

Then I plead guilty. I was one of those involved in those discussions, and absolutely rightly so. If there are two people doing the same job alongside each another, one who is an agency worker and one who is directly employed, it is absolutely right that they should be paid at the same rate. To fail to do that divides work forces and, as we have seen in some areas of economy, damages social cohesion.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that point. He and I have a difference of opinion on the matter, which I would happily talk to him about over one of those beers he used to have too many of. The point I was trying to make is that the lack of flexibility in our employment market might have led employers to try various tactics to reintroduce flexibility by a different route.

Like the hon. Gentleman, I have been talking to my constituents about the Budget over the past few days. Unlike him—I might be wrong about this—I go to a gym, which is a privilege. My doctor told me I should go. In fact, he says that I have the lower limbs of a runner—“athlete’s foot”, as he puts it colloquially. I was talking to a personal trainer at the gym who recognised the importance of lifting the tax threshold and how much it would mean to him. I also met a man there who has three jobs: he is a pest control expert, he sells logs and he is a gritter for my local authority. He recognised the importance of the change in the tax threshold and welcomes any changes that bring about a healthy welfare cap. I also met a neighbour of mine there who is very pleased with the pension changes because they will allow him to plan for his retirement flexibly, and hopefully spend his own money which he has already earned and paid tax on.

The Government have delivered some good thing for my constituency, such as the university technical college and massive investment in the further education sector, which will help with long-term youth unemployment in future. There has been massive investment in the town of Daventry, helped by the council, and massive investment coming into the Daventry international rail freight terminal, where new businesses and logistics are settling. That means that my constituency is remarkably different from Birmingham, Erdington. There are only 1,000 JSA claimants in my constituency—it is still too many—which is down by 30% from last year. That is a claimant rate of 2.1%. For 18 to 24-year-olds, the rate has fallen by almost 30%. The number of people claiming for more than 12 months has also fallen by over 30%.

As the hon. Members for Birmingham, Erdington and for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) and, to a certain extent, the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) said, we all have completely different constituencies. Perhaps the one-size-fits-all nature of Government delivery in trying to get people out of long-term unemployment simply will not work. We need a much more flexible solution.

Unlike some Opposition Members, I am quite pleased with the developments in the Work programme. It is a very big programme that has had more than its fair share of teething troubles, but up to December 2013 A4e, one of the two providers in my constituency, has achieved over 100 positive job outcomes in Daventry, which in the majority of cases means someone being supported into a job lasting over six months. On Friday, I went to A4e’s offices and met some of the people who work there helping to get people in my constituency back to work. I met Jodie, Hollie and lots of A4e staff giving their all to try to remedy this problem that we have in all our constituencies. I say to Labour Members that the one-size-fits-all approach does not work all the time. We need flexible solutions, and sometimes private providers are just as good as the public sector in achieving that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Heaton-Harris Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

3. What assessment he has made of recent trends in the award of discretionary housing payments.

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

9. What assessment he has made of recent trends in the award of discretionary housing payments.

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

13. What assessment he has made of recent trends in the award of discretionary housing payments.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Yes, this is a narrow but complicated area dating back to 1996 with the introduction of local reference rent rules. They were intended to offer transitional protection at that time for existing claimants, but they were not in any way time limited. There was another opportunity, in 2008, to change the regulations when the previous Government brought in local housing allowance. They were not adjusted then. This protection had been dormant for 17 years and not used. This is a complex area that we are now resolving, but I have to say that in three different Governments it has missed the attention of Ministers.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

Some would have had us believe that the discretionary housing payment will run out very quickly and that people will be forced out of London to live elsewhere. Will the Secretary of State confirm that there was an underspend in discretionary housing payments of nearly £11 million, and that the claims of social cleansing from the Opposition were complete rubbish?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Yes, I can. The reality, as my hon. Friend says, is that last year about £11 million in underspends was returned to the Department. It is interesting to note the claims made by some in this House. The hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) said that the money in her area was fast running out. It turns out that, at the six-month cut, only 28% of discretionary housing payment has actually been used. In Nottingham South, only 33% has been used. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) said that too much had been spent in Birmingham, Erdington, but only 47% has been used. Discretionary housing payments are there to be used to help those in the most difficult circumstances. Councils should get on and use them.

Specialist Disability Employment

Chris Heaton-Harris Excerpts

Tuesday 10th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Maria Miller]

I was pleased to have a meeting with the hon. Gentleman, who has been a doughty advocate for his factory and constituency, and obviously it is good that we will be moving forward with the bid. We will work hard to do everything we can to make bids successful, but obviously they have to be commercially viable and provide jobs for disabled people. Those are our priorities.

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

My apologies, Mr Speaker, for the tiny burst of excitement earlier.

Will my hon. Friend remind me how many factories were closed down by the last Labour Government and what support package they put in place to help workers made redundant in 2008?

[Maria Miller]

My hon. Friend will know that 29 factories were closed under the previous Administration, and it was an error not to put more support in place for people affected. I am sure, if Labour did it again, it would do things differently, because it became apparent very early on that, of the 1,611 disabled people who left factories as a result of the modernisation redundancy programme, very few got into work. However, given the package that we have put in place today and the record of Remploy employment services over the past two years—they have helped 35,000 disabled people to get into work—we are living under a very different set of arrangements.

Employment Support

Chris Heaton-Harris Excerpts

Wednesday 7th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Maria Miller]

I do not doubt the hon. Gentleman’s sincerity, but he needs to look at the facts. Some 20,000 disabled people were helped into employment last year, and that was achieved not in easy economic times, but in the difficult economic times we inherited from Labour. We made sure that 20,000 disabled people were able to get into employment. I can reassure him that throughout the country we are very effectively getting disabled people into employment, and that the £8 million we have put aside for employment support will help ensure that his constituents get the sort of support that I know he would want them to get.

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

The acoustics in the Chamber are slightly awkward tonight, so I did not quite hear the Minister’s answer about how many Remploy factories were closed by the last Labour Government. I would therefore appreciate it if she would repeat it. We in the Public Accounts Committee found out today that 442,700 people started apprenticeships in the last year. Can she assure us that there is cross-departmental working to ensure that such opportunities are available to all people?

Housing Benefit

Chris Heaton-Harris Excerpts

Tuesday 9th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Russell Brown]

I am sure I recognise the background that the hon. Gentleman comes from. May I offer him a quote?

“A mark of any society is how it cares for the vulnerable. It is not possible for any society to guarantee equality of outcomes for all; it is however possible to achieve equality of opportunities.”

That is a quote from the convener of the Church and Society Council of the Church of Scotland. Can the hon. Gentleman explain to me and to the House how people being forced from their homes because of the rent levels and the actions of his coalition Government will produce equality for anyone?

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

rose—

[Paul Uppal]

I was going to respond to the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr Brown), but I am happy to give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris).

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I thank my hon. Friend. Perhaps I can add another quote from a Labour Front Bencher:

“This would lead to social cleansing on an unprecedented scale, with poorer people shipped out in large numbers”.

Does that bring anything whatever to the debate?

[Paul Uppal]

We could trade quotes, but the issue was eloquently covered earlier by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, who made a passionate and pertinent point about the inflammatory language that has been used.

Government estimates show that spending on housing benefit has risen from £14 billion 10 years ago to £21 billion at present. These figures self-evidently make the case for reforming the system and I, for one, believe that reform is long overdue. The central point of the proposed reforms is that people who receive benefits should have the same choices regarding housing as people who do not get benefits. To be balanced in these reforms, the Government have announced more support for the additional discretionary housing payment to help the most vulnerable cases, particularly where there are unusual difficulties.

In a nutshell, if we are prepared to pay, as we are, £20,000 in housing benefit, is it not reasonable to assume that we can meet the vast majority of housing requests? But with a massive deficit, tough choices have to be made. We need to push ahead with the changes to ensure that hard-working individuals and families will no longer have to subsidise people living in properties that they themselves could not afford.

Figures will undoubtedly be bandied across the Chamber today, and I have no desire to rerun arguments that have been put forward already, but it is always important to put things in perspective. The maximum rent following the cap will be £400 a week, which is equivalent to £20,000 a year. As the Secretary of State said, based on what people spend on average on housing, this would require an income of more than £80,000 a year. The current maximum local housing allowance rate is £104,000 a year, which would require an income of well over £250,000 a year to fund. Can that be right? Indeed, it could be argued that extreme LHA payments act as a barrier to mobility, trapping people in unemployment and benefit dependency. It is also grossly unfair to expect hard-working low-income taxpayers to fund these rates.

Recently a constituent of mine wrote to me about his experiences as a landlord. The tenant received housing benefit directly after the landlord had been advised that he could be paid directly only if the tenant was in arrears by two months. I say this to show that there are always two sides to the argument—the tenant’s perspective and the landlord’s perspective. I quote my constituent:

“Currently tenants are assessed for housing benefit and the amount paid is dependent on the tenant’s personal circumstances and size of house . . . However if the housing benefit awarded is over the amount of rent agreed on the assured shorthold tenancy, the tenant is allowed to keep the difference.”

If the tenant benefits under the existing assured shorthold tenancy agreement, the landlord would have to make up the difference in the rent agreed.

My constituent continued:

“If the tenant is not happy that the rent is being paid directly to the landlord then the tenant has the right to move to a new property and the whole process starts again.

My tenant advised the housing benefit department that she had left my property; they subsequently stopped paying the rent. In fact she stayed at the house for three weeks without paying a penny. When I advised the council that she was still residing at the property and provided them with evidence of this, they said they had to take her word for it”.

Although I welcome the broad measures in the housing benefit reforms initiated by the Government, I believe that significant savings could be achieved if the local housing allowance were paid direct to landlords instead of to tenants. That would remove a significant disincentive for landlords to provide accommodation to LHA claimants. Research by the British Property Federation has shown that as a consequence, 60% of the landlords surveyed do not offer tenancies to those receiving LHA, mainly for fear of rent arrears. At the very least, claimants ought to have the right to choose how their housing benefit is paid, and be able to choose that their payments should go directly to the landlord.

I reiterate that I wholly support the Government’s measures, not only because they mark a move away from dependency towards independence, but because under the Labour Government housing benefit was allowed to spiral out of control. However, it would be wise to revisit the issue of direct payment to landlords to prevent public money from being wasted, and to encourage landlords to continue to let property to those receiving housing benefit. All of us would agree that the welfare system should provide an effective safety net, but it should not pay workless families far more than most working families earn. As has been said, the 2010 Labour party manifesto stated:

“Our goal is to make responsibility the cornerstone of our welfare state.”

I wonder whether the shadow Secretary of State still stands by those words.

I appreciate the acknowledgement in today’s Opposition motion that

“housing benefit is in need of reform”,

but they mean “at a slower pace”, which in essence seems to apply to almost all the debates that we have. Government Members have decided to address the problems that face our country, and, although Opposition Members now talk of reform, under their stewardship housing benefit increased by more than 50% in one decade.

This debate is not just about reform; it is essentially about responsibility—and Government Members have taken on that responsibility for the good of the country and its financial future.

Capital Gains Tax (Rates)

Chris Heaton-Harris Excerpts

Monday 28th June 2010 Commons Chamber

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

My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has delivered our first coalition Budget, making what he legitimately described as unavoidable choices in the face of a potential eurozone economic crisis. They will involve, first, a reduction in spending to repair the record deficit left by the previous Government. I remind the House that we inherited the largest deficit in peacetime history: for every £4 we spend today, we are being forced to borrow at least £1. According to the Office for Budget Responsibility, this Budget will put us back on track to balance the structural deficit by 2015-16, with net debt falling as a share of gross domestic product by the end of the Parliament.

Secondly, the measures will include a restructuring of the tax and welfare system, underpinned by our commitment to fairness and protecting the vulnerable, even when faced with some tough choices—and there are tough choices.

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend kindly clarify the rate at which the Department for Work and Pensions can undertake work capability assessments for people on incapacity benefit?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I was not going to deal with that at this point, but while we are on it, I can tell my hon. Friend that I know there has been speculation in the media over the past few hours and days. I can confirm that, as we said previously, we will launch the work programme in 2011, and will migrate current incapacity benefit claimants to employment support allowance over the three years. We have absolutely no intention of changing the current plan to assess 10,000 claimants per week over the period. That is our expectation. As the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) will know, it will involve challenges, but we will stick to it and see if we can get there. Unlike the last Government, we will provide an extra bit of help for those on employment support allowance who undergo the work capability assessment and need that support. My hon. Friend the Minister of State will table a statement tomorrow giving more details.

I am sure that the right hon. Lady—my opposite number—will back up what I have said. She has already expressed the hope that we will proceed with the changes that she introduced and with which we agreed.