Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Chris Stephens and Guy Opperman

Monday 13th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

12. What recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of benefit levels in the context of rises in the cost of living.

[The Minister for Employment (Guy Opperman)]

The Government have never spent more on welfare and benefit support than we presently do. From April 2023, we uprated benefits by 10.1% and increased the benefit cap levels by the same amount. That is on top of the cost of living support that has been made to multiple households and individuals to address the rising cost of bills.

[Chris Stephens]

I thank the Minister for that answer, but he will be aware that the Trussell Trust has warned that food banks are at “breaking point”, as more and more people across the UK are unable to afford the essentials, with new figures showing that 1.5 million emergency food parcels were distributed through the charity’s network between April and September this year. Will the Minister therefore back its joint campaign with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation calling for an essentials guarantee within universal credit, to ensure that the basic rate at least covers life’s essentials and that support can never fall below that level?

[Guy Opperman]

The hon. Member will be aware that there has been £94 billion of cost of living support over and above the 10.1% increase in benefit rates. That support is over 2022-23 and 2023-24. For example, the winter fuel payment will be paid to the tune of £600 or £500 over the next few weeks.

Universal Credit Deductions

Debate between Chris Stephens and Guy Opperman

Wednesday 19th July 2023 Westminster Hall

[Guy Opperman]

I certainly will do that, and I will also have a look at the individual letters that apply in those particular circumstances. All such letters, as the hon. Gentleman will know having done the pensions job for five long, lovely years, are kept under review, and there is the opportunity to do that.

The hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) is no longer in her place—I know she has to be elsewhere—but she raised in particular the issue of access to a journal for those who do not have the internet. Again, we need to make it clear that, obviously, an individual claimant can attend a jobcentre, which has computers that claimants can use to access their universal credit claim and their individual journal, or they can speak to a member of staff who can support them through the process.

[Chris Stephens]

Will the Minister give way?

[Guy Opperman]

Bear with me. I might give way, but I am going to keep trying to make progress. The hon. Gentleman had 20 minutes and will have more time soon.

Much criticism was made of DWP staff, particularly by the hon. Member for Leicester East. She used various expressions that I utterly reject. I will not dignify them by repeating them, but I want to make it utterly clear that I am proud to work with the 25,000 men and women who work in our 700-plus jobcentres up and down the country. They do a fantastic job in trying to assist everybody. When she impugns the individual character of DWP staff, I am afraid she is utterly wrong. She should reflect on that and visit her local jobcentre.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Chris Stephens and Guy Opperman

Monday 8th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

T2. I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. DWP staff report that Serco telephony services are causing excessive call times because the private sector staff are poorly trained. How much is this outsourcing obsession costing the taxpayer, and is it fair on claimants who face hours hanging on the phone only to receive often questionable advice?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Guy Opperman)]

If the hon. Gentleman wants to write to me I will try to get a more detailed answer, but the bottom line is this: he will be aware that there is a regular review of all contracts put out by the DWP, and in respect of Serco the latest data was published on 24 September 2021 and is available on the gov.uk website.

Social Security (Up-rating of Benefits) Bill

Debate between Chris Stephens and Guy Opperman

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons & Report stage & Report stage: House of Commons
Thursday 1st October 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Guy Opperman)]

I thank colleagues for their contributions and will respond briefly because I accept that these are probing amendments. I will most definitely not take up the opportunity to refight the 2019 election with the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds), because, frankly, that is probably somewhere he does not wish to go.

On the probing amendment on the triple lock, this is a matter, as was rightly highlighted by the hon. Gentleman, that the Secretary of State herself was pretty unequivocal about. I also welcome his analysis and appreciation that the state pension should not be viewed in isolation, because, quite clearly, it is one element of the various supported benefits that are available—whether a national health service, free at the point of delivery, or the support that is now going through with automatic enrolment, a cross-party policy developed by the Labour party and the Turner commission. Various Ministers in the Labour Government had brought that policy forward as part of the coalition, and it was then implemented by the Conservative Government. That has clearly had an impact, as has, obviously, the expansion of pension credit, and it should be seen in the round rather than on its own in that particular context.

Clearly, the key policy has been the increase in the basic state pension and the fact that we are now £1,900 larger than we were in 2010. Clearly, this is a matter that all parties in this House are supporting on an ongoing basis. I submit with respect that it is entirely appropriate that the Secretary of State should be allowed to bring forward this legislation, as the House seems to deem fit, and should conduct the uprating review and then come back to this House, as she is required to do, and debate the matter in this House.

The issue of pensioner poverty leads me into amendment 5 in respect of the women against state pension inequality. It is unquestionably difficult to predict future poverty rates when one is assessing an impact. The Bill is an enabling piece of legislation. It is not a piece of legislation that then implements a particular policy. There is also a danger with trying to accurately predict future poverty rates, when one is looking at an individual policy and an individual part of a Bill. For example, the published predictions of the Resolution Foundation, which were cited by colleagues earlier on, suggested that relative child poverty after housing costs would increase in 2017-18 when they actually fell. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has not published projections of poverty since 2017.

Let me turn now to the other amendments submitted by the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens). In respect of the assessment in amendment 3, I submit that there is a “be careful what you wish for” approach. The assessment is unnecessary and, in reality, unfeasible. The reality is that the UK state pension is payable worldwide and given that the socioeconomic conditions of each country vary enormously, it is simply unfeasible to produce a meaningful assessment of the uprating policy’s impact on overseas recipients, and—this is the crucial point—notwithstanding issues regarding feasibility, the timetable for laying a draft order for uprating does not allow for an assessment to be made. If there were to be an assessment, and the amendment was successful, the reality is that that assessment would not be made in time—by November 2020—with the consequence that the state pension would be frozen. I most definitely suggest, with great respect, that that assessment would be a negative idea for all the pensioners who are seeking an increase, potentially by reason of this legislation.

On amendment 4, this is a long-standing policy pursued by successive post-war Governments, who have taken the view that priority should be given to those living in the United Kingdom in drawing up expenditure plans for pensioner benefits. There are no plans to change that policy. The up-rating of the state pension is intended to provide support for pensioners who live in the UK.

I turn to the perennial issue that the hon. Gentleman seeks to raise—I do not diminish the fact that he wishes to raise it, as did the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde from the Opposition Front Bench—in respect of the changes to the state pension increase, which were, of course, supported for 13 years by the Labour Government when they were in power and, in fact, were enhanced by the 2007 Act. It is not the Government’s intention to amend the 1995 Act, the 2007 Act or the 2011 Act. Clearly, if the Scottish Government wish to act, sections 24, 26 and 28 of the Scotland Act 2016 give powers to the Scottish Government to intervene in Holyrood if they choose to do so. We would certainly resist any changes in this Parliament.

I take the point made by the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde about the 2019 election and the debate on that matter, but since then, there has been the Court of Appeal’s decision in respect of the court case, which unequivocally found for this Government, the coalition Government, the Labour Government and the Conservative Government, dating back to 1995 on all issues on these grounds, including notice. With respect, I believe that the matter should rest there.

The long and the short of it is that I would resist the amendments, and I invite the hon. Member for Glasgow South West, with due respect, not to press them.

[Chris Stephens]

I would love to say that I am shocked and stunned that the Government have not accepted any of the amendments, but that would perhaps be an oversell. As the Minister said, they are probing amendments. He will be well aware that we will return to these topics, and I invite Members of the other place perhaps to pick them up when they discuss the Bill. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 2 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

The Deputy Speaker resumed the Chair.

Bill reported, without amendment.

Bill read the Third time and passed.

Working at Height: Safety

Debate between Chris Stephens and Guy Opperman

Thursday 2nd May 2019 Westminster Hall

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr McCabe. When I saw your good self and the Minister sat there, I thought that I was in a Select Committee. I was ready to ask him impertinent questions—

[Guy Opperman]

The hon. Gentleman is never impertinent.

[Chris Stephens]

I will perhaps have to quote the Minister’s comment back at him during a future inquiry.

I congratulate my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), on all her work on working at height, which is particularly prevalent in sectors such as construction. I come from a trade union background and was a Unison activist in Glasgow, and we were very aware of such issues, in particular those around whether workers should get additional payments for the context in which they work—at height, for example—and so on. We should remember that in some sectors of the economy, blacklisting by employers was prevalent, often of individuals who expressed the health and safety concerns of workers. That is a real problem and it is still happening. Blacklisting is illegal, but some evidence presented to the Select Committee on Scottish Affairs last year suggested that the practice continues. I refer Members to the early-day motion in my name that calls for a public inquiry into blacklisting.

Every fall from height can have life-altering consequences for workers and their families. The working-at-height culture needs to improve, as the APPG report demonstrates clearly, but sadly the issue does not yet appear to be at the top of decision-making agendas. Lack of data prevents us from understanding the causes of falls from height, which is compounded by a cultural obstacle to supporting people to report unsafe practices.

This excellent report looks at the issues that the right hon. Member for Delyn (David Hanson) talked about, in particular the four primary recommendations: the enhanced reporting system; the appointment of an independent body to allow confidential, enhanced and digital reporting of all near-misses, to be shared with Government and industry to inform health and safety policy; the extension of the Working Well Together programme; and the extension of the Scotland fatal accident inquiry process to other parts of the United Kingdom.

Another concern to share is that, under the coalition Government, the HSE suffered cuts and job losses. Many of us from a trade union background and those Members in Parliament at the time had real concerns about the deregulation of health and safety and the reporting of it. I hope that the Minister will tell us what the existing staffing levels are at the HSE, because I would be concerned had the numbers reduced over the past 10 years. Clearly, we should not be cutting jobs at the Health and Safety Executive.

In Scotland, under section 29 of the Inquiries into Fatal Accidents and Sudden Deaths etc. (Scotland) Act 2016, Ministers are required to report on fatalities. Fatal accident inquiries are the legal mechanism through which deaths in the workplace are investigated. Inquiries are mandatory for deaths occurring in the workplace, as well as in custody, or when the circumstances are deemed to be in the public interest, and they are usually held in the sheriff courts. The outcomes of all fatal accident inquiries since 1999 are publicly available and can be accessed online via the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service. The all-party group calls for an equivalent system to be introduced in the rest of the UK, to ensure that employers are held to account for fatal injuries occurring as a result of workers falling from height, and that incidents are reported with sufficient information.

The Scottish Government are looking at the law on culpable homicide and considering proposals made by Members of the Scottish Parliament. For example, Claire Baker MSP launched a consultation, which ran from 7 November to 23 April this year, on how the law on culpable homicide can be tightened, and the related Bill appears to have cross-party support.

Companies can be prosecuted under the UK Government’s Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007. We support the Act, but have concerns about the lack of prosecutions under it. Will the Minister talk a bit about that when he responds to the debate? Individual directors can also be charged with the common law offence of culpable homicide or with offences under health and safety legislation, but the SNP position is that if existing legislation can be improved by devolved legislation, we will consider what further steps should be taken.

In the 2018-19 programme for government, the Scottish Government committed to establish in spring this year a new support service—developed and delivered with Victim Support Scotland—to give families bereaved by murder and culpable homicide dedicated and continuous support. That is an important part of the Government’s programme. Wider work to look at the law of homicide is also under way. The Scottish Government asked the Scottish Law Commission to consider that law, and examination commenced in February 2018. Our view is that every fatality at a place of employment in Scotland should be investigated, and that the nature of the deaths requires a detailed and often lengthy investigation involving complex, technical and medical issues and expert opinion. The law already allows individual directors to be charged, which of course is necessary.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central. Clearly, Scottish National party Members are leading the way in this Parliament in promoting the rights of workers. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) is campaigning against discrimination against young people in the living wage; my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South (Stewart Malcolm McDonald), is producing legislation on unpaid work trials; and I am promoting—this debate is another opportunity to do so—the Workers (Definition and Rights) Bill, which touches on issues such as a worker’s status. People in industries such as construction believe that they are workers or employees, but later find out that they are somehow self-employed. We need to get on top of the issue of precarious work.

Thank you, Mr McCabe, for chairing this debate. I commend to the House the report of the all-party parliamentary group on working at height.

Pension Credit Changes

Debate between Chris Stephens and Guy Opperman

Wednesday 24th April 2019 Westminster Hall

[Guy Opperman]

With respect, Parliament has debated the matter and made a decision. The hon. Lady will be aware of the 2011 equality impact assessment, the 2012 risk assessment, the universal credit impact assessment, and the ad hoc statistical analysis published on 28 February, which outlined the number of people affected, as the hon. Gentleman mentioned—approximately 115,000 mixed- age couples in the United Kingdom.[Official Report, 16 May 2019, Vol. 660, c. 4MC.]

[Chris Stephens]

I want to come back to the ministerial statement. There have been various changes to the political make-up of Parliament since 2012. There must be at least 200 new MPs since then, and I think they would want to consider the change, particularly in the light of other benefit changes, as the hon. Member for High Peak (Ruth George) said. Did the Department consider a fresh debate? The Minister mentioned the quality impact assessment. Could he tell us whether a fresh equality impact assessment was made this year prior to the announcement on 14 January?

[Guy Opperman]

I cannot go back to the specific debates in 2012 and say chapter and verse what was discussed at that stage, but it is a relatively normal procedure for this House to legislate on matters that will be contingent on a written ministerial statement or a commencement order. That standard practice was followed in this case. I am not aware of a fresh equality impact assessment being done. The equality impact assessment was done in respect of the Welfare Reform Act.

[Guy Opperman]

I will deal with that point and then perhaps return to it in more detail later. I accept that there are other points relevant to this debate, but it is inevitable that devolution will come up when one discusses welfare with a colleague from the Scottish National party and other Scottish colleagues. Certainly, it has come up in relation to the campaigns on the state pension age.

My hon. Friend will be aware of two facts in particular. First, Jeane Freeman, who was my opposite number as the Scottish pensions Minister, wrote to my predecessor on 22 June 2017 concerning the powers under sections 26, 28 and 24 of the Scotland Act. Of particular interest is section 26, about which she wrote:

“This power is limited to providing help with ‘short term needs’, and those needs must require to be met to avoid a risk to a person’s wellbeing. That would not readily allow assistance to the majority of the women affected by the acceleration of the increase in their State Pension Age. Their needs and the risks to their well-being would have to be assessed individually.”

She also dealt with the creation of a new benefit under section 28, which is a possibility, and the top-up of reserved benefits under section 24, which is a wide-ranging power to make discretionary payments.

That deals with the original point in 2017. The point can then fairly be made that if the Scottish Government disagree with any of the UK Government’s welfare reforms, they have powers to do something about that in Scotland. I want to make it absolutely clear that, in addition to the substantial support that the UK Government are providing, the Scottish Government have significant new powers available to them to tailor welfare provision for people in Scotland. Although pensions themselves are very definitely a reserved matter, the Scotland Act gives the Scottish Government the ability to use a wide range of new welfare provisions.

I was asked specifically whether I have been engaged with by Scottish Ministers who seek to provide specific top-up support for mixed-age couples. I have not been made aware of any such information being provided to me. Frankly, it is not for the UK Government to do that. If the Scottish Government wish to do that, the ball is in their court, given their powers under the Scotland Act. Clearly, that is a matter for the hon. Member for Glasgow South West to take up with the Scottish Government at Holyrood.

Let me return to the change itself, which ensures that the younger partner has the same work incentives as others of the same age. Those claiming universal credit have access to tailored support from work coaches to help them find work, and universal credit is designed to ensure that work always pays, which is not the case for pension credit.

Let me try to address the specific point raised by the hon. Member for High Peak (Ruth George). First, I endeavoured to address her emails of 10 and 11 April, which arrived shortly before Easter and were looked at by the Department over Easter. I have written her a letter. We exchanged comments before the debate, and I accept that she has not received that letter. I signed it off late yesterday afternoon, on my first day back in the Department; to be fair to the Department, there is no criticism of it whatever. I also wrote a letter to the hon. Member for Glasgow South West, but we managed to get that to him in time.

I am conscious that the hon. Lady raised a specific fault. I am happy to put it on the record that there was an acceptance that that was a fault, and that, as of 18 April, it has been fixed. The reality of the situation is that the calculator provided the wrong outcome in one particular instance—for couples where one member is in receipt of carer’s allowance and the other retains an underlying entitlement to carer’s allowance. I will leave her to look at the specifics of the letter when she receives it later today. I am grateful to her and the Derbyshire team for bringing the issue to our attention. It has been rectified, and I hope the position on that matter has been addressed.

The hon. Lady raised a separate issue about pension credit generally. It is entirely the case that we are attempting to encourage people to be in a position to take up pension credit in a particular way, and there most definitely is a desire for that to happen. All 115,000 existing mixed-age couples involved were written to subsequent to the decision being made in January. Although I do not have a regional breakdown of that figure, 8,000 people will potentially be affected in Scotland. I do not have localised figures for the hon. Lady’s area.

I want to stress that the change does not in any way affect entitlement to state pension or the level of state pension. Mixed-age couples who are already receiving pension credit or pension-age housing benefit on 14 May will not be affected for as long as they remain entitled to either of those benefits. As I said, we have written directly to those couples to inform them of the change. The change therefore will apply mainly to working-age couples currently claiming means-tested benefit, or to mixed-age couples who apply for benefit only after the date of the change.

[Chris Stephens]

I thank the Minister for giving way again; he is being very generous. On the calculations, has he had any meetings with Age UK or Age Scotland, which indicate that people could be £7,000 a year worse off as a result of the change?

[Guy Opperman]

Age UK has met repeatedly—as recently as last month, as I understand it—with civil servants and special advisers in the Department for Work and Pensions. It is almost impossible to state what a future calculation will be without taking into account whether the individual will apply for a job and what their allowances for caring responsibilities and their other entitlements will be. There is a requirement and a desire for universal credit to incentivise and reward paid work, while pension credit is intended to provide long-term support to pensioner households who have left the labour market permanently through retirement.

State Pension Age: Women

Debate between Chris Stephens and Guy Opperman

Thursday 31st January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Guy Opperman]

I accept those points. That was specifically reviewed by John Cridland on an independent basis, as ordered by Parliament, in 2017. His report, a copy of which is in the Library, addresses those points.

I will make a couple of points on Cridland’s report before I come to the issue of period life expectancy. Cridland sets out the figures on the first page of his report. In 1917 only 24 people reached their 100th birthday. In 2016 6,000 did. The expectation is that by 2015 56,000 people will reach this milestone. He estimates that by approximately 2047 life expectancy could be 98 for women and 95 for men. Given that when the state pension was introduced in 1908 it had a retirement age of 70, only one in four people were expected to reach that age and life expectancy thereafter was nine years, there has been a dramatic improvement in life expectancy.

[Chris Stephens]

Will the Minister give way?

[Guy Opperman]

I will move on to the particular point about healthy life expectancy.

I had prepared specifically for the south Wales example. I do not have the north-east examples, but they are broadly analogous. I may be able to provide the north-east examples before I sit down. The Office for National Statistics releases period life expectancy by local area of the United Kingdom, but not by parliamentary constituency, as I explained earlier to the hon. Member for Gower. Life expectancy at birth in Swansea is 77 for men and 82 for women, but it has increased for both men and women in that area since 2001 and 2003 by two years. It has increased in every local area of the UK over the same period. In the hon. Lady’s region, life expectancy is 17 years for men at 65 and 20 years for women, and this has increased again since 2001 and 2003.

--- Later in debate ---

[Guy Opperman]

I can only refer the hon. Lady to the specifics that I have given: the Department for Work and Pensions’ assessment, “Economic labour market status of individuals aged 50 and over”, which contains the official statistics that we use for the fuller working lives programme, and the survey by the Office for National Statistics. I do not have a specific answer to her specific question, but I expect a consideration of that point to be within the ambit of the work that those two organisations have done.

[Chris Stephens]

Will the Minister give way?

[Guy Opperman]

May I finish this point? Then I will, perfectly properly, allow the hon. Gentleman, who is a member of the Select Committee, to intervene. I am keen to deal with the issue of the judicial review, which I have not yet addressed.

We have appointed Andy Briggs as the business champion for older workers. Along with the Business in the Community Age at Work leadership team, he spearheads the Government’s work in helping employers to retain, retrain and recruit older workers, actively promoting their benefits to employers throughout England, both strategically and by means of practical advice.

I will now give way to the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens).

[Chris Stephens]

I am grateful to the Minister. I will be brief, because I want to hear what he has to say about the judicial review. Is he saying that it is Government policy, as well as his view, that there is a difference between an individual’s working life expectancy and an individual’s life expectancy?

[Guy Opperman]

I shall try to respond to the hon. Gentleman’s question in writing in order to be specific, but my understanding is as per the Cridland report, which was fundamentally adopted by the Government. As the hon. Gentleman will know, the reviewers assessed the position on an individual, independent basis, having heard copious evidence, travelling all over the country taking representations from trade unions and devolved Administrations and producing in the fullness of time, a very comprehensive report.

Let me now turn to the complex issue of the judicial review. Members will be aware that the High Court has ruled that a judicial review on these matters will go to a full hearing. The case is listed to be heard in the Divisional Court on 5 and 6 June. It would clearly be inappropriate for me, or any other Minister, to comment further on live litigation.

Members will also be aware that complaints of maladministration have been made about the Department’s handling of the communications relating to the state pension age changes. The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman has decided to suspend consideration of those cases until a final decision has been made in the judicial review. Separately, the Department for Work and Pensions has suspended work on the complaints until a final decision has been reached by the courts. We have sent—and are sending—letters explaining that to individuals who have sent complaints to the Department in order to ensure that they are properly informed of the suspensions, and information has been added to the gov.uk website.

We have also undertaken to follow up individuals who already had active complaints in the DWP system, and to give them further information on next steps following the reaching of a final decision in the courts. It is right of course that we communicate those next steps as and when they are clear.

Matters outside the scope of the judicial review will continue to follow the normal DWP complaints procedure. Separately, the independent case examiner closed all the live maladministration complaints when they became subject to legal proceedings, as is required under its governance contract. When the legal proceedings are concluded, the independent case examiner could consider reopening the cases at the request of the Department.

The actions taken by the Department in respect of the maladministration complaints is consistent with the approach of the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman’s office. As I pointed out in my letter to the Chair of the Work and Pensions Select Committee on 15 January, this approach is fundamentally consistent with any situation where the Government are subject to a judicial review, as in this case, whether in relation to their actions or the actions of another Government—I stand here defending the actions not just of this Government but of the coalition Government, the Labour Government of 1997-2010 and the preceding Government, all of whose actions are effectively the subject matter of the judicial review.