Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Philp Excerpts

Monday 19th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Justin Tomlinson]

We disagreed with the findings, but we did take the opportunity to share our record of delivering record employment, a simplified benefits system that helps some of the most vulnerable people in society and 1 million fewer people in absolute poverty, as well as our proactive work with stakeholders, which is delivering real life opportunities for all in society.

[Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)]

3. What steps the Government have taken to support claimants through universal credit managed migration.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

22. What steps she has taken to improve the roll-out of universal credit.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Amber Rudd)]

The regulations were laid before the House on 5 November, following consultation with the Social Security Advisory Committee. We are working with a wide range of stakeholders on processes to ensure that vulnerable claimants are moved smoothly on to universal credit.

[Chris Philp]

May I add my congratulations to the Secretary of State on her well deserved return to the Front Bench? Croydon South is one of the constituencies with the highest level of universal credit roll-out, at 43%, and in general it is helping people back into work. There are, however, some technical anomalies relating to the timing of the assessment period as people come off work and into benefits or where they receive two salary payments in the same assessment period. Will the Secretary of State look into that particular anomaly and, if appropriate, make some small technical adjustments?

[Amber Rudd]

I have a number of matters that I will be looking into, having taken on this important new role. My hon. Friend raises an important point. I would point out to him that universal credit is successfully a dynamic assessment, so if somebody is paid twice during one month, the benefit payments will reflect that and then be adjusted the following month, but I am quite prepared to look at any issues he wants to bring me.

Universal Credit

Chris Philp Excerpts

Wednesday 17th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Margaret Greenwood]

I am taking no more interventions. [Interruption.] Well, I am short of time and many people have applied to speak.

Receiving the letter will also be unsettling when people have been on their existing benefit for a significant period. Of course, some people may miss the letter altogether. Also, they may well struggle to fill the form in on time and to get the necessary advice because, due to this Government’s cuts, the advice agencies are stretched to the limit. There is provision for the deadline to be extended but many people will not be aware of that. The Government have admitted that they do not know how many people overall will need additional support to make a new claim.

The Prime Minister assured us last week that people required to transfer to universal credit would not be worse off because they will receive transitional protection—an additional payment that tops up someone’s universal credit to the same level of the benefits that they were previously receiving. However, that only lasts for two years and could be lost when someone’s circumstances change, which can include such basic life events as moving in with a partner or separating from them.

If people lose transitional protection, they will find that the support they receive under universal credit is often significantly lower. For example, there is no enhanced disability premium, which is currently claimed by over 1.4 million people, and no severe disability premium, which is claimed by another 500,000 of the most severely disabled people who live alone. There is even a danger that many of the most vulnerable will fall out of the social security system altogether and be left without any income at all. According to the latest figures, almost 30% of universal credit claims started are never completed. Do the Government not care about what happens to these people?

The Government say that universal credit will lend to greater take-up, but not if people cannot make a claim in the first place. People with low literacy skills, a learning disability or no IT access are likely to find it difficult to cope with a complex online system. [Interruption.]

[Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way to give her voice a rest?

[Margaret Greenwood]

This is a really serious matter and the hon. Gentleman would do well to focus on the issue at hand.

If we translate the percentage of claims that are closed before they are completed to the nearly 3 million people the Government want to transfer across, we can see that nearly 1 million people are at risk of falling out of the social security system altogether.

Food banks are reporting that they are running out of food. In August, Department for Work and Pensions officials carried out a study to identify areas where DWP operational practices contributed to a rise in demand for food bank services. I think that any Member of the House will know the answer to that.

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[Ms McVey]

Let me get back to the independent reports, what is happening, and what is being made publicly available. We are learning from the evidence, building on that evidence, and making decisions so that we can improve the system as it goes further. [Hon. Members: “Give way!”] The power to choose who is going to get a question!

[Chris Philp]

Is not the real way to combat poverty to get people off benefits and into work, is not the evidence that people on universal credit are more likely to get back into work than people on the old benefits, and is not that the real test of this system’s success?

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

Will the Secretary of State give way?

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[Neil Gray]

As ever, my hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Scottish Government have already spent £400 million mitigating the Tory mess on social security. We have used flexibilities on universal credit to make the system better, but we cannot be expected to fill the gaps forever; the change has to happen at source.

[Chris Philp]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that total spending on benefits relating to disabled people stands at about £50 billion a year and that it has gone up considerably in real terms? Since 2010, spending in total has gone up, not down.

[Neil Gray]

The hon. Gentleman has completely ignored the points I mentioned that have been made by the CPAG and other expert groups. He has completely ignored that. Government Members are deaf to the facts.

There are of course some cheerleaders for the version of universal credit before us. There are those who say nothing needs to be changed, and those whose loyalty makes them blind to reality. They continually say it gets people into work, but the National Audit Office has explicitly said that this claim is absolute patent nonsense. Page 10 of its report states:

“The Department will never be able to measure whether Universal Credit actually leads to 200,000 more people in work, because it cannot isolate the effect of Universal Credit from other economic factors in increasing employment.”

I would love to hear the evidence that directly correlates universal credit alone as the factor in increasing employment.

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[Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab)]

I should not really be shocked. I have been an MP for long enough and I have heard the rhetoric from the Government for long enough not to be shocked. I have to say, however, that listening to the Secretary of State today, and the tenor of the interventions and comments we have heard from some Government Members, beggars belief. Their approach is utterly divorced from reality. This programme was supposed to be about so-called compassionate conservatism. If the Government really believed the rhetoric behind the programme when they set it up—that it was about making work pay and all those high ideals—they, and the Secretary of State in particular, would show some humility in their approach to the debate.

Clearly, the Secretary of State has made the political decision to front this out while our constituents are being forced to live in misery and face destitution. That is not compassionate, that is not humane and that is not moral. I urge the Secretary of State to reflect on the attitude she is displaying to the House, our constituents and the country in the way that she is approaching this debate, because it is not acceptable. It flies in the face of the rhetoric the Government themselves use. What they are doing today is unbelievable.

[Chris Philp]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I will not.

It is not unusual for Government programmes to run into trouble. I am a member of the Public Accounts Committee and it is our bread-and-butter work every week to look at Government programmes that run into difficulties. A Government who cared about a programme —one that is not a vehicle for cuts and is not designed to force people to have less money than the system it is replacing—would actually engage properly and genuinely to learn lessons and make the programme better. Instead, the Government said that talk of cuts was somehow fake news. The Secretary of State then had to admit that people are going to be worse off. We have heard the figures of £200 a month and £2,400 a year being mooted. That is a staggering sum of money to lose every year for the working poor and the vulnerable in our community. We know that the self-employed will potentially be up to £2,500 a year worse off compared with those who are not self-employed under the new system. These are the realities that the Government cannot deny. That is not fake news; that is just the truth.

The Government and the DWP said to the National Audit Office—this was recorded in its most recent report—that the organisations at the coalface of helping our constituents to deal with the troubles they face because of universal credit, whether the Trussell Trust, other people who run food banks or local government, which is now facing much higher levels of rent arrears than previously, are motivated by a desire to lobby for changes rather than accurately reflect what is happening on the ground. That is a disgraceful attitude for the Department to take towards organisations that, yes, may well have a different vision for how they think the social security system should work, but are absolutely telling the truth about the destitution and difficulties our constituents are facing.

I invite the Secretary of State and any of her Ministers to come and spend a day in my constituency office and to see the explosion in our case load that has been created by the roll-out of universal credit. My staff spend most of their time every single day on the phone trying to sort out difficulties arising from universal credit. I shall highlight just two cases we have had recently, the first regarding delayed payments. The Government say they are taking action on that, but I have a constituent who has not received any money since 12 July. He has no money for food, fuel or anything. I invite the Secretary of State to intervene and tell me what I should tell him about where he should get some money to try to survive while his universal credit is being sorted out.

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[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

The right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel) is absolutely right to say that change is urgently needed, and I hope that her Front-Bench colleagues will have heard that. Of all the many flaws in universal credit, the worst is the five-week delay between claiming and being entitled to benefit. Ministers can justify this—the Secretary of State had a go at doing so again yesterday—only in the case of people who have just left a monthly paid job and therefore have a month’s salary in the bank. The reality is that a very large number of people do not have a month’s salary in the bank when they make a claim for universal credit. Many are paid weekly or on zero-hours contracts; for all sorts of reasons, many are simply not in the position to have that much money in the bank. I spoke to a claimant on Merseyside at a time when the delay was even longer than it is now. She told me that the jobcentre had sent her away to live on water for six weeks. She reached the point at which she attempted to take her own life. Five weeks without support is not a realistic or acceptable feature of this benefit.

[Chris Philp]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for raising that important case. Would his constituent not have been eligible to receive an advance payment, had she applied for one? They are now available at 100%.

[Stephen Timms]

She was not told about the availability of an advance payment. They are now being better publicised than when she made her claim, but the problem with advance payments is that people are being plunged into debt right at the start of their claim. For many, it is impossible to get out of debt once the system has forced them on to that slope. The result is that they have to go to food banks. We know that food bank demand rockets when universal credit comes in, because people get behind with their rent and other debts mount. I say to Conservative Members—many of them are fully aware of this—that this is not the way to treat our fellow citizens. Universal credit must be changed to stop this happening.

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[Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) is one of the most decent and compassionate men I have ever met, and the slurs we have just heard on his motivation are completely unacceptable and have no place in a calm and civilised debate. Some Labour Members, such as the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), have set an extremely fine example as to how these matters can be debated in a calm and proper way—I always listen carefully to what he has to say, because his speeches are always thoughtful and well delivered.

Let us remind ourselves of why universal credit was introduced in the first place. The previous system was broken and was not fit for purpose because there were in effect marginal taxation rates of over 90% in many cases, and there were cliff edges—at 16 hours of work, for example—that meant that people who worked more hours were worse off. People came to us, their Members of Parliament, and said, “We are not going to work any more hours, because there will be less money in our pocket afterwards.” That is clearly a completely unacceptable situation, which is why this reform, in principle, is so necessary.

We have heard today about individual errors in the system, which are obviously very regrettable and Ministers will want to correct them, but let us not forget that almost 6 million people are in receipt of these benefits—either the old ones or the new ones—and, when we are handing out 6 million payments a month, there are bound to be occasional individual errors. Let us not confuse those very regrettable individual errors with a more systemic issue.

Some systemic issues were identified during the roll-out of universal credit, and steps have been taken in the past six or nine months to address some of those issues.

[Michael Tomlinson]

My hon. Friend has mentioned two categories: systemic problems and individual problems. Surely people with individual problems should go to the Department or to their local Jobcentre Plus and say, “Please address this. Something has gone wrong.” In the case of systemic problems, we should adopt the Government’s approach of testing and learning to adapt and change the system.

[Chris Philp]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, as always. Where there have been systemic issues, measures have been taken to address them. One example is that housing benefit now gets paid for another two weeks after the change to address some of the issues with rent arrears that Members have properly raised. Secondly, claimants can now get a 100% advance, which addresses the point raised by the right hon. Member for East Ham. The seven-day wait has also been eliminated.

The Minister will also want to think about fine-tuning the period when calculating eligibility. A person who receives their last salary payment, particularly if it is quite a large salary payment, towards the end of their last month in employment may not be eligible to receive a universal credit payment in the following month because their final salary payment counts towards the calculation. I have such a constituency case, and the dates need to be fine-tuned and studied a little more carefully. I would be happy to sit down with the Minister to go through the particulars of the case, which is quite technical and complicated, if it would assist him in his work.

Croydon South has the joint highest proportion of claimants who have been moved across to universal credit, at 43%. Only two or three other constituencies in the country have such a high rate, so we have quite a good base of evidence in my constituency. The SNP Front Bencher said that we should take with a pinch of salt what Conservative Members say—

[Neil Gray]

A lorry load of salt.

[Chris Philp]

He said we should take with a lorry load of salt what Conservative Members say about how UC operates in their constituencies. That was of course a slur on the integrity of Conservative Members, but I contacted my caseworker during this debate to ascertain the facts. In Croydon, about 4,000 people are currently in receipt of UC, because 43% have migrated; that is my estimate and so it may not be exactly right, but the figure is probably somewhere in the region of 4,000. In the past six months there have been 21 cases where someone has contacted me as their constituency MP, some of which were to do with eligibility questions, such as where the person lives. I would say that 21 individual cases out of about 4,000 is not an excessive number of queries, but when they are raised I know that Ministers will look to deal with them.

Opposition Members have suggested that this is about cuts, but I respectfully remind them again that benefits paid to people who are disabled have gone up to £54 billion in total—that is a substantial real-terms increase. This is not about cuts, as more money is going into disability benefits now than at any time in history. I shall conclude by saying that a measure of compassion, and of Government success in policy and welfare, is not how much money we spend on aggregate, but how many people we get out of poverty and into prosperity, and that is done through work.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Universal Credit

Chris Philp Excerpts

Tuesday 13th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

I ask all Members of the House to bear in mind what Madam Deputy Speaker has said when they make interventions. I will try to be as brief as I possibly can.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), the shadow Chancellor, has said, this Tory Government have created a crisis on a scale that we have not seen before. Today, they did nothing to tackle it, and in these regulations they seek to make it even worse. If the House does not vote for our motions today, more than 1 million families will lose out. First, they will lose their free school meals.

[Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady agree with Channel 4’s FactCheck, which says:

“This is not a case of the government taking free school meals from a million children”?

These are children who are not currently receiving free school meals, and in fact the Government’s proposals would see 50,000 extra children receive free school meals. Perhaps the hon. Lady could stop giving inaccurate information to the House.

[Angela Rayner]

The hon. Gentleman should know that his Government have introduced transitional arrangements, and we are clear that under the transitional arrangements, those 1 million children would be entitled to free school meals. With the regulations, the Government are pulling the rug from under those hard-working families.

In my own boroughs of Oldham and Tameside, a total of 8,700 children growing up in poverty are set to miss out. In the Secretary of State’s own area, the total is 6,500. So much for the light at the end of the tunnel that the Chancellor mentioned over the weekend on “The Andrew Marr Show”!

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[Angela Rayner]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, which I will come on to later in my contribution. As I said, those who are just above—

[Chris Philp]

rose—

[Angela Rayner]

You have had your chance, thank you. As I said—[Interruption.] Hon. Members have been told that more than 40 people want to speak in this debate, and I am trying to give way as best I can. The hon. Gentleman has already intervened once; I think that was more than enough.

Those who are just above the threshold would be better off earning less under these proposals. The Government are pulling the rug from under their feet, because once they earn above £7,400, they will be about £400 a year worse off for each child they have in school. So just when did the Government abandon the principle that work should pay? Perhaps the Secretary of State can tell us why she will be voting for a policy that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain) said, is twice as generous in Northern Ireland as it will be for her own constituents?

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[Ms McVey]

The right hon. Gentleman raises a fair point that I would like to address. By contrast, the other points that we have heard so far have been fabrication. He mentioned people earning £7,400. Actually, with universal credit, we are talking about people who will be bringing home somewhere between £18,000 to £24,000. He is quite right—[Interruption.] If Members will kindly let me finish this answer to the very pertinent question asked by the right hon. Gentleman, as this is now a personalised benefit where people will have their own work coaches, we will not seek to put someone in a less advantageous situation. Therefore, if people look at the money that is coming in and the extra support that is coming from school meals, they can see that we will not seek to do that to an individual. A work coach will be working with individuals to help them to progress in work, so that they are in a better situation.

[Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)]

On work incentives, can the Secretary of State confirm that there have been two studies—one in December 2015 and another in September 2017—both of which showed that people on universal credit were more likely to get back into work than those people on the predecessor benefits? Therefore, this is helping to get people back into work.

[Ms McVey]

My hon. Friend is quite correct. Further studies show that people on universal credit are much more likely to look for work than people on jobseeker’s allowance—86% of those on universal credit, compared to 34% of those on jobseeker’s allowance. Under the legacy benefits came things that I am sure we all remember, such as the 16-hour rule, which trapped people on benefits. That will not happen under universal credit because it pays people to work, every hour that they work.

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[Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)]

We live in strange political times both in this country and across the Atlantic, where we frequently hear reports about fake news. In such times it is therefore particularly incumbent on Members of all parties in this House to be very careful about the way in which they use and present facts, because democratic discourse is impossible without honest and accurate facts. We undermine our entire system of democracy when elected Members of this Parliament play fast and loose with facts.

We have heard Members in this debate saying that free school meals are going to be reduced—that was the phrase used by the previous speaker. Other Opposition Members have said that free school meals would be “taken away”. It is clear that those statements are not accurate. Several colleagues have referred to the “Channel 4 News” FactCheck discourse on this matter, and it is clear that no children currently in receipt of free school meals will have them taken away. In fact, more children will receive free school meals as a result of these proposals. It is simply untrue to say that 1 million children will have their free school meals taken away or reduced. By making comments implying that, the shadow Education Secretary, who I can see chuntering, is doing our democracy a disservice.

Perhaps the hon. Lady is trying to insinuate that there was a Government policy that would have provided extra school meals, but for some kind of U-turn. The “Channel 4 News” FactCheck is clear about that as well, and the Government have also been clear about it. There was an interim transitional measure. My right hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock), when he was a junior Skills Minister, made that clear when the scheme was set up in April 2013, and my hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill), when he was a junior Education Minister, made the same point last July. It is wholly inaccurate to suggest that there was ever a hypothetical Government policy under which these children would ever have received extra school meals.

The shadow Education Secretary has done this House and herself a great disservice—[Interruption.] Indeed she has the right to speak, but she ought to take care to be accurate when she does so, because her words matter and she should weigh them carefully.

[Angela Rayner]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Is there any recourse for me to challenge the fact that an hon. Member is suggesting that I have misled this House in this debate?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

First of all, nobody will mislead this House because we are all hon. Members. I am sure that when we come to the wind-ups, everything will be put in its correct order.

[Chris Philp]

The hon. Lady and her party have suggested that everybody in receipt of universal credit should receive free school meals. That has never been the policy of the Government, but apparently it is the policy of the Labour party. That would entail about 50% of schoolchildren receiving free school meals. She was asked, in a direct question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry), how much this policy, which goes beyond that in the Labour manifesto, would cost and how she would pay for it, but she declined to answer. If she is advocating this policy which goes far beyond current Government policy—as she clearly is—she ought to explain how much it would cost and how she would pay for it, because promising things for free without explaining how they would be paid for is a deeply irresponsible thing to do. I will support the Government in this evening’s Divisions.

Financial Guidance and Claims Bill [Lords]

Chris Philp Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 22nd January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ms McVey]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention. No one knows more about this subject than him, and I am glad he has put that on the record. These are all things that we need to consult on to make sure that we get the new regulation right.

[Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)]

On the question of cold calling raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey), the cold calling provisions appear in clause 4 in part 1 of the Bill. Could the Secretary of State clarify whether those powers to prohibit cold calling will apply not just to financial guidance but to claims management companies, which are the topic of part 2? I hope that the answer is yes.

[Ms McVey]

That is our intention and that is what we will do, but those finer points will be worked out by the body as it works responsibly on behalf of UK citizens.

I want now to address issues that I know will be of interest to hon. Members. The Government have been clear that we will not stand for unlawful, persistent cold calling made by companies in the claims management sector. Cold calling is already illegal under certain circumstances. Under the privacy and electronic communication regulations, we have forced companies to display their numbers when they call, made it easier to take action against those involved in making the calls, and strengthened the powers of the Information Commissioner’s Office to impose fines.

That being said, a number of companies continue to act disreputably, so it is only right that the Government continue to take steps to further regulate the sector. That is why the Government committed in the other place to introduce measures to tackle those issues. The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport is currently working through the details of an amendment to prohibit CMCs from making live, unsolicited calls unless the receiver has given prior consent. That step, combined with the Government’s previous actions in this area, should act as a warning to those acting unlawfully that we will not rest until the problem has truly been eradicated.

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[Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)]

I will try to do a great deal better than 10 minutes to 12 minutes, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is a great pleasure to follow the thoughtful speech of the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams). I welcome the Bill and will of course be delighted to support it later on this evening, and I want to talk about part 2 and claims management companies.

The reason why I have taken an interest in claim management companies is that my wife and I were involved in a minor road traffic accident on the M5 a few years ago, while heading to Cornwall for a family holiday. For a year or so following that minor bump, I was plagued with calls to my mobile phone on an almost weekly basis by a claims management company. Goodness knows how it got my number. In each call, it essentially tried to persuade me to submit a fraudulent claim for whiplash. No matter how persistently I told the caller that my family and I suffered absolutely no injury and that we did not have even the slightest ache or pain, they would say, “Well, if you just tell us that your neck hurts a bit, we will get you £3,000.” They were extremely persistent, and I can imagine that if somebody was a bit short of cash, they might succumb to that kind of blandishment. I therefore made the topic something that I wanted to get involved in after being elected, and I have raised it several times in Westminster Hall and am delighted to be able to raise it again today.

The number of whiplash or soft tissue injury claims following minor road traffic accidents has increased by an astonishing 50% over the past few years. At the same time, the number of road traffic accidents has gone down by 30%, so the number of accidents that lead to a claim has increased stratospherically. If we compare the number of claims in this country with those in an equivalent European country, such as France or Germany, there are far more claims here than elsewhere in Europe.

As the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth mentioned, a similar phenomenon has recently started in relation to claims for gastric illness—tummy upsets—on holiday. I remind the House of my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests of a shareholding in a small holiday business, although not one that has had a significant problem in this area.

Since 2013, there has been a 568% increase in claims for tummy upsets on holiday. There have been some notorious cases, such as that of Deborah Briton and Paul Roberts, who a short time ago were respectively sentenced to nine months and 15 months in prison by Liverpool Crown court having rather foolishly tweeted and posted on Facebook about how wonderful their holiday was before trying to claim, at the behest of some claims management company, that the holiday had been ruined by gastric illness.

Such cases, in which claims management companies have incited the public essentially to commit fraud, are becoming all too common. My objection to the activities of such claims management companies is twofold. First, they are inciting otherwise law-abiding members of the public to commit fraud, which is clearly a morally corrosive phenomenon. Secondly, of course, the cost of all these compensation payments is ultimately borne by drivers through higher insurance premiums—some people estimate the total cost of that at an extra £2.5 billion—or by consumers through higher holiday costs.

It is consumers—our constituents—who end up bearing the cost of such activities, so I am pleased that the Bill will begin to take steps to sort it out. Why does this happen? It happens because there are enormous financial incentives for claims management companies to operate in this way, particularly due to the concept of one-way cost shifting whereby, unusually, even if the defendant—the holiday company or the car insurance company—successfully defends a case, it none the less has to pay the claimant’s legal costs. The legal costs for a fully contested case often run up to £10,000 or more, whereas settling a case often costs only £3,000 or £4,000, so the insurer or the holiday company sadly has a financial incentive to settle and the claims management company, knowing that, simply has to process the paperwork to collect very high fees.

Claims management companies are responding to a financial incentive that the current system has unfortunately created. The number of claims management companies mushroomed from 500 in 2006 to 3,300 in 2011. I am pleased to say that measures already taken have reduced the figure to 1,500, but that is still far too high and there is definitely more we need to do.

I welcome the fact that the Bill will transfer oversight responsibilities to the Financial Conduct Authority, and I certainly welcome the introduction of fee caps for claims management companies. We must be careful to draft those regulations to ensure that claims management companies cannot circumvent the cap. The cap refers to 20% or 25% of net recovery, and we need to ensure claims management companies cannot somehow extract any portion of the recovery by way of fixed charges levied upfront. We have to be careful about the detail of the wording because these companies are adept at circumventing Government attempts to restrict their activities.

[Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech on an important issue. He will understand how much Scottish Conservative Members support the Bill because, until now, in Scotland there has been no protection whatever for consumers in the face of this onslaught by claims management companies.

[Chris Philp]

I am shocked to learn that the Scottish Government have been so slow to take action when the Westminster Government have been so quick.

[Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)]

The hon. Gentleman will understand that this is a reserved matter, so the Scottish Government have no locus to act.

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[Stephen Kerr]

That’s not true.

[Chris Philp]

I notice that my hon. Friend takes a different view from the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Neil Gray), and no doubt he will elaborate on that point if he speaks later in the debate.

[Vicky Ford]

I thank my hon. Friend for making this powerful speech. In addition to raising the cost of insurance for everybody else and encouraging people to commit fraud, does he agree that cold calling can often cause huge distress to the person on the other end of the phone, who is constantly reminded about an accident that they might wish to forget?

[Chris Philp]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I consider myself a fairly robust individual, but the constant pestering by those companies was distressing, and if somebody is vulnerable in any way, I can imagine that it would be very distressing indeed.

That leads me to my next point in relation to the cold call ban contemplated under clause 4. I strongly welcome the clause’s inclusion, but its structure invites the new single regulatory authority to make a recommendation to the Secretary of State, who then, by regulation, has power to act. Given the pressing nature of the problem, will the Secretary of State consider a more direct route—that is, the Secretary of State having the power to ban cold calling in this area immediately, without needing to wait for a referral by the new regulatory authority? I see that the Secretary of State is listening to the point. I hope she will consider it, as Members on both sides of the House might welcome such an amendment as consideration of the Bill progresses.

There are other things that we need to do that are probably beyond the scope of the Bill but important none the less. In particular, the Government are consulting on the civil procedure rules and bringing overseas claims—holiday claims—within the scope of the fixed fee schedule. That would be an extremely welcome move, and I encourage the Ministry of Justice to expedite its response to that consultation, which is welcome.

In 2017, I had the pleasure of serving on the Committee that considered the Prisons and Courts Bill—I see the Minister recalls that—whose work was unfortunately interrupted by the general election. I believe that the Government plan to introduce a civil liability Bill in due course. Again, I encourage them to introduce that Bill as quickly as possible, because many important measures could be included in it that would assist in dealing with the problems to which I have referred, not least raising the threshold for the small claims track to £5,000, considering a ban on general damages in relation to low-value injuries and ensuring that the medical evidence standard for these various claims is made a little higher—for example, requiring someone actually to see an independent doctor face to face. The civil liabilities Bill could do a range of things once introduced.

Not wishing to stretch the elastic of your guidelines, Mr Deputy Speaker, I conclude by saying that this is a welcome Bill that will do a great deal to strengthen consumer protections. It is a great pleasure to speak in support of it on Second Reading.

Pensions

Chris Philp Excerpts

Wednesday 19th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

My hon. Friend puts it very well. It is a cause of celebration that life expectancy is improving, but along with changes in life expectancy, inevitably, there are changes in the state pension age, as the change announced today demonstrates.

[Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that thanks to the financial responsibility shown hitherto, we have managed in the past seven years to increase state pensions quite generously by £1,250 a year, and that is why pensioner poverty has gone down?

[Mr Gauke]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. In order to do that, we need to take responsible decisions on the public finances as a whole, including on the state pension age. That is what we will continue to do, even if we will not get Labour’s support.