Benefit Entitlement (Restriction) Bill
Christopher Chope Excerpts(11 years ago)
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Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now Read a Second time.
It is a great privilege to serve under your chairmanship for the first time on a Friday, Madam Deputy Speaker.
This is one of a series of Bills presented, and for every week that has passed since it was first printed, it has become more relevant. There is tremendous public concern about this matter. The Bill would make
“provision to restrict the entitlement of non-UK citizens from the European Union and the European Economic Area to taxpayer-funded benefits.”
Last week, the front page of The Sunday Times carried a big headline reading, “Ban migrant welfare for two years”. Those were the words of the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, who was quoted in the article as saying:
“Britain should be able to say to a migrant: ‘Demonstrate that you are committed to the country, that you are a resident and that you are here for a period of time and you are generally taking work and that you are contributing… At that particular point…it could be a year, it could be two years, after that, then we will consider you a resident of the UK’”.
Unfortunately, what my right hon. Friend says does not accord with EU law, so it was no surprise to read the brief on my Bill produced by the policy research unit, which referred to the quote from the Secretary of State, but then said:
“However, this is not Government policy. Sources close to Mr Duncan Smith stressed he was expressing an aspiration for the future, rather than spelling out a policy.”
That is the problem. Senior politicians, whether it be the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions or even the Deputy Prime Minister, can beat their chests and say, “The present state of affairs, with EU migrants coming here and sponging off our taxpayer-funded benefits system, is unacceptable”, but when one looks at the detail, one sees that despite their huffing and puffing, they cannot do anything about it, except perhaps for the first three months that somebody is here, which is no big deal. Once someone from another EU country has been here for more than three months, they effectively have as much access to our benefits system as you or me, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
Apparently, one reason we cannot do much about it, legally, is that we have a universal system, rather than a contributory system. The Bulgarian Prime Minister says that our Prime Minister is being nasty, but he is not. It is actually much more difficult to get benefits in a country such as Germany, so we are just being sensible, and if the only way we can deal with this problem is to move to a contributory system, perhaps we should. There is a desire among many countries, particularly Germany, Britain and other developed countries, to try to solve this problem. It is not about being nasty; it is about being sensible.
Mr Chope
I certainly agree that it is about being sensible, but I am not sure the solution lies in trying to change our benefits system. Surely, we, as a sovereign country, should be able to decide what benefits system we want for our own people and should not have to try to tailor it so that it cannot be abused under EU rules.
The bigger problem was referred to by Dominic Lawson also in an article in last week’s edition of The Sunday Times. He wrote that
“although the great majority of east European migrants are entrepreneurially seeking the much higher wages available in the richer nations, a proportion will be welfare tourists.”
He then referred to the
“point made many years ago by Milton Friedman, who believed in open borders: he asserted that you can have a generous welfare state or open borders, but not both…There is no doubt that free and open immigration is the right policy in a libertarian state, but in a welfare state, it is a different story; the supply of immigrants will become infinite.”
Indeed, that is the concern of people in this country—that the supply of immigrants is becoming infinite. We look in the Government statistics for the numbers, but again we find that they fudge the figures and do not even collect the raw material.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend think that the number of migrants coming into the country and the consequent increase in the supply of labour has had an effect on the cost of labour, resulting in the necessity of the introduction of things such as the minimum wage?
Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)
In opposition to my hon. Friend’s comment, I am a very strong supporter of the minimum wage, and I believe that it is a progressive thing to trickle down the effects of the economic turnaround. There is ample evidence from a university of Essex study and various other studies that an increase in the minimum wage does not have any impact on job creation.
Mr Chope
I am sorry to disagree with my hon. Friend, but as soon as he resorts to the expression “progressive” and subsequently refers to the university of Essex, he has lost me. I think that the level of wages should be set in a private arrangement between the employer and the employee, and that it is not for the Government to intervene. We hear all the current talk about whether the minimum wage should be increased, but it is open to anyone currently on the minimum wage to go to their employer and say, “I would like to be paid more”, while it is open to the employer to pay their workers more. The fact that they are not being paid more suggests to me that the labour market is such that if they were paid more it would result in either them or their colleagues being put out of work.
The whole concept of a national minimum wage ignores the fact that we have different labour markets in different parts of the country. What might be a reasonable wage in London might be a totally unrealistic and unaffordable wage in some of the more remote parts of the country. I do not know what my hon. Friend thinks the position is in Hexham, but if the national minimum wage is designed to ensure that people in London and in Hexham are treated equally well, it is likely to have the result of reducing the employment opportunities in his constituency.
Guy Opperman
I will pass on my hon. Friend’s apologies to the university of Essex. The harsh reality is that there is ample evidence from a variety of sources, including from other universities—[Interruption.] They are not their own sources; they are independent. It has been shown that the minimum wage does not impact on jobs. My hon. Friend challenged me specifically on the north-east. I represent an area that has one of the highest levels of social deprivation and there is still significant unemployment there to this day. It is coming down, but it is still significant. A rise in the minimum wage would be a fantastically good thing—for the north-east and for employers. I suggest that it would produce greater loyalty, greater productivity and greater enthusiasm in the work force. That is evidenced by companies, whether they be big ones such as Barclays or Aquila Way in Gateshead—a housing association that provides good support for the living wage.
Mr Chope
Perhaps we will get a chance to discuss the Employment Opportunities Bill later. As the name suggests, it gives employment opportunities to people who would not otherwise have them. I hope that my hon. Friend has looked at the Bill. To assert, as he has, that the minimum wage cannot have any impact on jobs is to ignore the level at which the minimum wage is set. That is why the Low Pay Commission was set up to look at the level and make recommendations on the minimum wage. I know that you, Madam Deputy Speaker, will be concerned if we start discussing the Employment Opportunities Bill in detail at this stage—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. The hon. Gentleman is accustomed to making long speeches in this Chamber on a Friday. I am listening very carefully to the content of his speech and to the information he provides to make sure that what he says is entirely related to the Benefit Entitlement (Restriction) Bill. I would be surprised to discover that the hon. Gentleman wished to talk out his own Bill, so I am sure that he will stick very strictly to the matter in hand.
Madam Deputy Speaker
I will be very surprised if the hon. Gentleman is still speaking and in order at 2.30.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
To help my hon. Friend seamlessly to slip back into the mainstream of his present Bill, as opposed to commenting on his other Bill further down the Order Paper, will he explain what could have possessed the Government, if they decided that they wished to deter benefit tourism, to impose a non-claimability period of just 12 or 13 weeks rather than an effectively longer period? If they did not want to impose an effectively long period, why put in any period at all—other than for some sort of public relations purpose?
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend makes a good point about public relations; the Government have to be seen to be doing something, but they are constrained by the current state of European Union law, which will prevent them from being able to take any action against people after they have been in this country for more than three months. That is why the Government are making a great virtue of saying, “We are going to get really tough on people in the first three months they are here.” However, they are not emphasising that once those people have been here for three months the world is their oyster and they have free access to all our taxpayer-funded benefits.
Mr Nuttall
Is my hon. Friend aware of any change in EU regulations that has prevented the three-month rule from existing until now? If he is not aware of any such change, does he share my concern that that rule has not always been implemented in the UK?
Mr Chope
As I shall go on to discuss, the problem is that EU law in this area is evolving and changing. That is largely being done through regulation, but it is also occurring through decisions taken by the unelected judges in the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. They are, in effect, giving an interpretation of what was originally a free movement directive—everybody would have gone along with that, because one core element in the European Economic Community was that people should be able to go from one country to another and take up employment there. Following the successive treaties, directives and regulations, the interpretation now is of people having a right to go to claim benefits in any country in the European Union once they have been there for more than three months.
Sir Edward Leigh
We are told that this proposal is against European law, but clearly the law is evolving. In any event, people cannot claim benefits in a place such as Germany unless they have been there for a considerable time. So why do the Government indulge in the politics of the pre-emptive cringe, kowtowing before what the European Commission might say in the future? Why do we not just say, “You cannot get a benefit for 12 months” and see whether it takes us to court? We could argue about it for years, so I do not know why we do not just stand firm on this.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend makes a good point. Indeed, he will see that clauses 2, 3 and 4 of the Bill state:
“Notwithstanding…the European Communities Act 1972”.
In other words, the Bill would ensure that we were able to decide these things for ourselves, as a sovereign legislature, and override European Union law. My hon. Friend’s point was, in a sense, echoed by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in an article in The Sunday Times to which I referred earlier. It states that he
“added that reforming benefits was part of a wider move towards no longer automatically accepting rulings from the European Commission and courts.”
He welcomed the comments by Lord Judge, the former lord chief justice, that ‘we shouldn’t always assume straight away that anything that comes legally out of Europe we have to impose’ and said he was optimistic that there was the ‘beginning of a twitch with the Supreme Court”.
My Bill is designed to go a bit further than a twitch; it is designed to ensure that we change our law. If we suffer infraction proceedings in the European Court of Justice, one thing is certain: they are unlikely to reach a conclusion until you and I are in our dotage, Madam Deputy Speaker. The ECJ involves a very long-winded process, and because it is so long-winded, the French Government, for example, will deliberately defy EU law in the knowledge that any sanctions arising from their defiance will not be apparent until many, many years later.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
What does my hon. Friend think would be the practicality of any sanction on a country that is a net contributor to the EU budget?
Mr Chope
I am not going to answer that question; as with so many of my hon. Friend’s interventions, he perhaps already knows the answer, in which case he will be able to adumbrate it if he contributes to the debate. The point he makes is that we are net contributors, and if the European Union thinks that we can be kicked around and we will do whatever Mrs Reding or anybody else wants us to do, it is about time they started concentrating their minds on the fact that British taxpayers pay a lot of their salaries.
Again, if fines or penalties are imposed, that creates distortions. I suppose we could set them off against our contributions to the European Union.
I became particularly interested in this subject early last year, because I thought that it was absolutely fundamental that our country can distinguish between our nationals and nationals of other European Union countries in dealing with benefit issues. A few parliamentary questions have been asked on the subject. In answer to a question asked on 14 January 2013, the then Minister of State at the Department for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Mr Hoban), said:
“The UK’s benefit payment systems do not currently record details of a claimant’s nationality. Looking forward, the Government is considering ways of recording nationality and immigration status of migrants who make a claim to universal credit”.—[Official Report, 14 January 2013; Vol. 556, c. 466W.]
I hope that the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning), who is on the Front Bench today, will tell us what has happened in the subsequent year regarding recording nationality and immigration status, because if we do not even have basic information about the nationality of migrants or people claiming benefit, and have no means of finding that out, how can we ever have the tight controls that the Government keep talking about to ensure that migrants from other EU countries do not abuse our benefit system in their first three months here, or ensure that they are genuinely seeking work?
The first provision in the Bill would ensure that national insurance numbers were issued only after the applicant had declared their nationality, and would not make it possible for anybody to claim benefit without declaring their nationality. In that way, we could at least gather some statistics about the use of our benefit system by nationals from other countries, which we certainly cannot do at the moment.
There is a big problem and I fear that it suits the Government not to give the people the full facts on this issue. They have statistics measuring net migration, for the purposes of meeting a commitment they made at the last general election to reduce net migration to the tens of thousands. However, there are different ways in which net migration is calculated. The labour force survey estimates that the number of A2 nationals living in the UK has increased by 25,000 a year in the six years between 2007 and 2013. However, the Government’s figures, which are based on passenger surveys carried out at ports and airports, suggest that there were fewer than 10,000 new people from Bulgaria and Romania a year. As we do not have a way of measuring people’s nationality when it comes to national insurance numbers or benefit claimants, the Government have to rely on passenger surveys to find out how many people have come from Romania or Bulgaria. The Office for National Statistics has been critical of the cavalier way in which the UK collects those statistics.
Clause 1 of my Bill would make it much easier for us to have a proper public debate on these issues, based on the facts rather than on conjecture. I hope that the Minister agrees that is a good idea.
Clause 2 of my Bill says:
“Notwithstanding the provisions of the European Communities Act 1972, no non-UK citizen who is a national of a member country of the European Union or the European Economic Area shall be eligible for housing benefit or council tax benefit in England and Wales unless the benefit entitlement arises by reason of having the status of a spouse or dependant of a UK citizen.”
In other words, the clause would close down access to housing and council tax benefit for people who have come to this country to work or to play.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
As my hon. Friend knows, I fully support his Bill and the intention behind it. Does he think that child benefit falls under the clause on dependants, because one thing that irritates my constituents is when people come over from other countries in the EU and claim child benefit for children who have never left their country of origin and seemingly are entitled to it? I think that that is an absolute outrage, and I am certain that most of my constituents think so too.
Mr Chope
It is an outrage, but, unfortunately, it is in accordance with European Union law and case law. The other day, the Deputy Prime Minister, ever the populist or attempted populist, said in relation to child benefits that there was “complete unity” in the coalition—that is probably the first inaccuracy—on tightening up benefit rules for European migrants. He then said that he did not quite understand
“why it is possible under the current rules for someone to claim child benefit for children who aren't even in this country.”
He might not understand that, but if he had looked at the legal advice given to the Government and published on their own website, he would find the answer set out for him. The legal annexe on the issue of free movement cites a number of European Court of Justice cases. Specifically, in the case of Martinez-Sala, case number 85/96, it says that it is possible to require the payment of a “child-raising allowance” to a person for children outside the country in which they reside. That is why, despite the huffing and puffing, we cannot do anything about it.
Philip Davies
I agree with that, and that is why I want to get out of the wretched European Union at the first opportunity. I just wondered whether my hon. Friend’s Bill would deal with that issue and stop that payment of child benefit. Under the clause on dependants, he talks about housing benefit and council tax benefit, but does not specifically mention child benefit. I am just worried that he is going a bit soft. He is not going far enough with his Bill.
Mr Chope
Clause 4 of my Bill says:
“Notwithstanding the provisions of the European Communities Act 1972, no UK taxpayer-funded benefit”—
which is obviously what child benefit is—
“shall be paid to a citizen of another country in membership of the European Union…unless the entitlement to that benefit arises from an insurance-based contribution which the claimant has made.”
In that case, such a person would not be eligible for child benefit. Clause 3 would also have a bearing on that. It says that
“no UK taxpayer-funded benefit shall be paid to a citizen of another country…at a rate which exceeds in cash terms the equivalent benefit which would be payable to such a person if that person were resident in the country of his nationality.”
In other words, a Pole working here would be able to claim child benefit in respect of his children in Poland at the rate prevailing under Polish national law, rather than at the rate prevailing under UK law.
Dr Julian Lewis
Given that we may have to wait a year or two at least before we have the opportunity to decide whether we stay in the European Union, does my hon. Friend think that the suggestion made in the letter organised by my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) about this Parliament being given the right to overrule decrees from the European Union that we regard to be against the national interest might be one way of making progress, even if his Bill, for all its merits, does not succeed in the meantime?
Sir Edward Leigh
It was suggested that our proposal that Parliament should have a right to veto European legislation is contrary to European law, but it is interesting that a member of the German Bundestag said on the “Today” programme that, in his opinion, such a veto is not contrary to European law because the German supreme court can apparently strike down legislation that is contrary to the German constitution. So the proposal contained in the letter from our hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) is eminently sensible, and we could do it. We should at least include the proposal in our manifesto.
Mr Chope
I agree with my hon. Friend. If the Government were more open with the people about the fact that they have no scope under existing law to do anything about the people’s concerns on other European Union citizens’ access to our taxpayer-funded benefits, that would help the Government to make the case for a completely fresh arrangement with the European Union. At the moment, we are deluding ourselves and the people in thinking that we can address those very serious concerns.
When my hon. Friends and I launched our Bills after the Queen’s Speech, the noble Lord Ashcroft commissioned a survey of the popularity of the proposed measures. I remind my hon. Friend the Minister that the proposal in clause 1 to record the nationality of everyone with a national insurance number or on benefits received the support of 71% of the sample, with only 8% of people against the proposal and 21% undecided. On the proposal to restrict welfare benefits to UK citizens only, which is effectively the rest of the Bill, 74% were in favour, with another 13% undecided.
I hope the Minister will realise that he should not be in any doubt, if there is any doubt, about the public demand for the measure. At the moment, the public are demanding the measure and the Government are not saying, “No we can’t do it because we are tied by European Union law. We therefore have to change the European Union law or get out of the European Union.” The Government are pretending that they have freedom and flexibility to act under European Union law when they do not. I suppose no one really wants to admit impotence, least of all a Government, but that is their situation in the face of the evolving European Union law in this field.
I will not address in great detail the way in which European Union law has evolved, but I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will answer some of the questions I asked in the debate on 5 June 2013 that were never answered. I asked:
“Does the Minister agree with the basic proposition that if someone from another European country decides to move to the United Kingdom, they should not expect to receive taxpayer-funded assistance for their housing, health care, education or living expenses?”—[Official Report, 5 June 2013; Vol. 563, c. 256WH.]
If the answer is that the Minister does not agree, let us have it on the record. It is no good ducking these questions. If a non-British EU national cannot afford to live in the United Kingdom without recourse to taxpayer-funded services, should not that person return to his own EU country rather than relying on UK taxpayer handouts? If the Government do not agree with that they should say so and then we can have a proper debate. I am sure we will then get even more letters than we do at the moment from UK Independence party supporters saying how out of the touch the Government are with the feelings of the people—but that is only an aside, Madam Deputy Speaker.
I hope that we will get some answers to those questions and will move away from the very carefully worded statements that on close analysis mean absolutely nothing, such as, “People will not be allowed to have benefits subject to their European Union rights.” Since their European Union rights give them access to almost all benefits, I submit that such a statement is without any value.
In essence, what happened was that we joined the European Economic Community, the fundamentals of which include freedom of movement, but over a period of time freedom of movement has been extended by treaty, directive, regulation and case law into areas that nobody could ever have contemplated. None of those extensions was discussed with the British people and hardly any of them were discussed with our Parliament.
The legal annexe, which is a scholarly document, spells out in frightening detail the extent to which the European Court of Justice has extended the scope of the various directives. For example, paragraph 47 states:
“In the case of Metock”
in 2008, the European Court of Justice made it clear that the free movement directive
“should not be interpreted restrictively and that its objectives must not be interpreted so as to deprive them of their effectiveness. The particular impact of the case in terms of the UK’s competence was its clear assertion that a member state should not be imposing additional requirements on those seeking to rely on free movement rights in addition to those set out in the existing legislation”.
The European Court of Justice is extending the law because it has direct application and because of the so-called shares of competence, which effectively mean that if the European Union legislates in this area it is not open to the UK Parliament or the UK Government to legislate in conflict with that.
Through the process of treating people from other countries in Europe who come to the United Kingdom as equals, we are moving inexorably towards the ever-closer union whereby people would not be citizens of an individual country but would just be citizens of the European Union. That is the agenda. When one sees the European Court of Justice’s interpretation of the various expressions in the legislation, one can see exactly what the threats on the horizon are and that they go beyond those that we have already witnessed.
Philip Davies
Will my hon. Friend expand on that? Many people are confused about whether the EU rules allow free movement of people or free movement of labour. If it is free movement of labour, does he agree that if somebody from another EU country does not have a job that should give the Government every entitlement to send that person back to their country rather than allowing them to stay in the UK accessing UK benefits?
Mr Chope
The problem is that the definition of “worker” is being extended. A significant case is pending in the European Court of Justice—that of Saint Prix v. the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions—and a preliminary reference concerns
“whether a person who gives up work… can remain a worker under Article 45.”
One is bound to sympathise with the Secretary of State, because the language—well, normal language just does not apply. It might be because the European Court of Justice works solely in French and delivers all its judgments in French. None the less, I think that it is extending the language somewhat to say that someone who gives up work can remain a worker. That is linked to the current provision, which states that a person cannot access means-tested benefits if they are going to be a burden on the social assistance system, but that system is being defined so narrowly that almost everyone is entitled to means-tested benefits.
I could give further examples, but I will draw my remarks to a close. Even if the Bill does not become law in this Session of Parliament, I hope that it will form a core part of the Conservative party manifesto at the next general election, because I am sure that its contents really accord with the wishes of the British people, as exemplified in any number of opinion polls.
Philip Davies
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. He is leading with his chin on these matters. He is getting out increasingly bigger spades with which to dig himself into a hole. He has now suggested that nobody from the EU comes here to claim benefits, but that everybody who comes here from outside the EU does so to claim benefits and that we need to restrict access to benefits for them. If he is not saying that, presumably his argument is that we should allow a free-for-all of benefits for anyone from anywhere around the world. That is certainly not an argument that I support, and I do not think that the majority of my constituents would support it.
Mr Chope
Does my hon. Friend agree that the question is not just whether people arrive here with the intention of claiming benefits, but whether, having been here for a bit of time and seen our generous benefits system, people decide not to seek employment but to claim benefits? For example, I had a constituency case in which a person came here from another European country and, after a year, gave up work and went on housing benefit, saying, “There’s no need for me to work.”
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I suspect that many Members have had similar cases. A man from Poland came into my constituency surgery who had come here to work, as he was entitled to do. He had heard on the grapevine in his local community that he was entitled to claim child benefit for his four children who were still residing back home in Poland. He thought that seemed like a good wheeze and that, if all his colleagues were doing it, he might as well do it himself. Of course, he found that, bizarrely, he was entitled to child benefit for his four children, who had never in their lives set foot outside Poland and who were living there with his wife, their mother. There is absolutely no justification for anybody from another country in the EU claiming child benefit for children who have not even had the decency to come over to this country and who are still residing in their home country.
The reason I support the Bill so strongly is that I believe we should treat all non-UK citizens the same, irrespective of where they are from. To me, that means restricting their access to benefits in this country. That is a simple proposition that I think most people in this country would support. We cannot afford to carry on handing out benefits willy-nilly to people who choose to come here from all over the EU—it is not sustainable for the welfare state or for our citizens. It will collapse the welfare state for UK citizens if we keep having to add to the burden.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
The Bill is, of course, directly incompatible with our membership of the European Union. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] The hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) proposes that European Union citizens who are working legally in the UK should not be entitled, for example, to help with their housing costs, which UK citizens are entitled to. That direct discrimination against EU citizens is clearly incompatible with our obligations as a member state—I noted the enthusiasm for that proposition on the Conservative Benches.
One puzzling aspect of the Bill is that under its terms, contrary to what the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) said, people from outside Europe would continue to receive the help that citizens of the European Union would be prevented from receiving. He said that he wanted anyone who is not a UK citizen to be denied access to benefits, and I think he is under the impression that that is what the Bill would do. In fact, it would have that effect only on EU citizens, not on citizens from countries elsewhere in the world.
Two million citizens of other European countries are living in the UK. Many will have lived in the UK for a long time, and some will be in receipt of housing benefit or council tax benefit, alongside other UK residents whose circumstances are similar. Under clause 2 they would suddenly stop receiving that help. Some will be in receipt of other non-contributory benefits such as pension credit, so we are talking about some pensioners being affected, perhaps after a lifetime of working in the UK. Some are in receipt of child benefit, which is not insurance based, or tax credits, but under clause 4 they would suddenly lose them. European Union citizens would suddenly be disadvantaged not only relative to UK citizens, but also relative to citizens of non-European countries. The hon. Gentleman has told the House that that is not his intention, but that is the effect of the Bill he supports.
Stephen Timms
They may be entitled to do that, but many do not. Is it not the case that London has one of the largest French populations in the world? I think only two or three cities in France have more French citizens living in them than London does. The hon. Gentleman may feel that they should all apply for UK citizenship, but that seems to me an unreasonable demand.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Mike Penning)
It is a privilege to serve in the House this afternoon as the duty Minister at the Department for Work and Pensions. I am sure that hon. Members on both sides of the House will not be surprised to hear that I and the Government support much of what has been said today. I was accused earlier of probably having a carefully worded statement to read out which had been prepared after hours of works by civil servants. Anybody who knows me since I have been a Minister knows that I have never read out anything carefully worded in my life, which is why I get in trouble so much—but there we are.
As the shadow Minister and several colleagues alluded to, I am trapped, not so much, interestingly, by our membership of the EU, but by the interpretation of that membership by the courts over the years, which has extended the powers of unelected bodies over this country and this House. I am also slightly restricted in that, if I, as a Minister of the Crown, have legal advice that the Bill would be a breach for which I could be infracted, I am required, as the shadow Minister will know, being a former Minister, not to get the Government into that position. The ministerial code prevents me from doing that.
The Government will, therefore, be opposing the Bill today. I shall explain why and what we are doing. As announced already, we are doing as much as we can, within the established framework, to ensure that people who come to this country from the EU and the EEA come here to work from the outset and that they are restricted from getting benefits for the first three months.
I heard during today’s debate that that is not much of a restriction. I would have thought that people from different countries being in this country for 12 weeks with no income whatever would provide quite a restriction and would mean bearing a lot of financial hardship. Getting here and then having to live here for three months without benefits would be quite restrictive. I accept that there might be sponsorship for some, but three months is as far as we could go, although we continue to look at other measures while negotiations with our European partners are taking place.
Mike Penning
I was coming on to that, as it was one of the questions I was asked. Indeed, it is a question that I have asked as a Minister in the Department. Although employment benefits are not exactly my—
Mr Chope
That is both a surprise and a disappointment, although I am grateful to the Minister for saying that he agrees with a lot of the ideas behind the Bill. He says, in effect, that his hands are tied, he cannot do anything about it and we need to renegotiate these issues. My concern is that there does not seem to be any evidence that we will be able to command a majority in the European Union to renegotiate along the lines that we seek. When I asked the Prime Minister whether this issue would be one on which we would be renegotiating, my question was passed to the Foreign Office and it replied by setting out priorities for renegotiation that did not include anything to do with the subject matter of the Bill. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister has therefore been announcing new Government policy today in saying that this subject will be right at the forefront of our renegotiation of our terms of engagement with the European Union. If that is so, I have not been putting forward this Bill and arguing in vain.
In closing, I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) and for Shipley (Philip Davies) for their support and encouragement on the Bill. I am also grateful to my nearby colleague in Hampshire, my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis). Their presence and involvement shows that this subject will not go away and that a lot of people feel strongly about it. I asked the Minister how he will be able to find out whether somebody applying for jobseeker’s allowance has been in this country for less than three months, and whether they come from outside the United Kingdom and are a national of another EU country. In reply, he said that he would not be able to sort that out with a requirement as to nationality until universal credit came in, but on any view that is some many months or years away. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions are saying, “We are going to get tough, with effect from 1 January.” That is because people from Romania and Bulgaria were able to come here from 1 January and we were assured that we would be rigorous in ensuring that none of them would be able to apply for benefits within three months of their arrival. How are we going to know when people arrived and what nationality they are unless we have some means of asking the questions?
The Minister’s failure to answer that simple question drives a coach and horses through this aspect of Government policy. It is a charade; we are giving people the impression that we have got control over this when we have no control over it whatsoever. If that was not apparent from what has been said already, the fact that the Government are being taken to the European Court on the issue even of the habitual residence test just shows that the European Union is working in the opposite direction from us. That is why I think I speak for most of my hon. Friends in saying that unless we can sort this out, we would be better off out of the European Union. That is why I think it would be useful, because of the ongoing European Union debate, to test the will of the House on this matter.
Question put, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Disabled People
Christopher Chope Excerpts(11 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Hoban
I shall give the hon. Gentleman some homework for the summer recess. If he goes back to Thursday’s Hansard and the statement that the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey), made about stage 2 for Remploy factories, he will see that it sets out in detail the work that we have done to get people back into employment, and it gives the aggregate figures. The success in getting people into work after the closure of Remploy factories has outpaced what normally happens with redundancies. What we have seen demonstrates the important support given to get people into work.
This Government remain convinced of the need to maximise the opportunities available to disabled people to enable them to realise their employment aspirations. The principal objectives of our disability employment strategy are to increase the employment rate for disabled people, and to maximise the opportunity for disabled people to realise their employment aspirations and thus achieve greater economic independence. We will publish our strategy later this year. We need to make sure that money is targeted more effectively, to ensure that support continues to be available to those who need it most, that there is a lasting impact and that interventions provide a fair deal for the taxpayer.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
My hon. Friend talks about priorities. Will he assure the House that the Government’s priority is to give help to disabled people who are British citizens over those who are not British citizens?
Mr Hoban
What we need to do is make sure that we get more people into work, regardless of their disability, and we must help them into employment. We are particularly supporting those who were Remploy employees to get into work, as well as broader groups. That is our focus; that is exactly what the Government are trying to do. That is why we accepted the recommendation from disability expert Liz Sayce that we should focus support on individuals through services such as Access to Work, rather than through institutions such as Remploy, so that more disabled people can work in mainstream employment.
Next week we will see the first ever disability employment conference, a flagship event funded by Government and business. This will involve more than 600 people in London and five regional locations via video link, with many more watching online. The conference is a unique opportunity for businesses and Government to come together to identify the challenges that others are facing and provide innovative solutions to tap into this underemployed pool of talent and reap the benefits that this can bring. But next week’s conference is just the beginning. Over the next two years we will continue to work with business to bring about a new disability-confident perspective on employment and improve the employment outcomes for disabled people.
I have no doubt that people want to work, but some are held back by a complex and unwieldy benefit system with weak or even non-existent incentives to work. Our plans for welfare reform will transform the benefits landscape. We have designed a new system with work as its focus—a coherent approach which ensures that people will be better off in work than on benefits. I firmly believe that the vast majority of people want to work and gain greater independence, but we also know that many disabled people who want to work fear the risk of losing their benefits and feel that that is too great a risk of getting into work. By simplifying the benefits system and making sure that work pays, universal credit will remove the financial risks of taking the first steps back into employment, and increase the incentives for working, even for a few hours a week.
Let me deal with some of the points that the right hon. Gentleman made. Universal credit will provide unconditional support to those disabled people who are not expected to do any work. There will be no cash losers in the roll-out of universal credit. People will see their level of benefit protected when they switch over if their circumstances remain the same. Indeed, the average change in income for disabled people under universal credit is an increase of £8 a month.
Universal credit will provide support for carers and improve their opportunities to maintain links with the world of work. Many families will benefit from help with child care costs, especially people who work under 16 hours a week, who will get help for the first time. Households with one or more disabled adults will be able to keep up to £647 a month of their earnings before seeing a reduction in their universal credit. It will also offer a more flexible system for people whose ability to work fluctuates. Universal credit will encourage more disabled people to see work as financially viable, increasing their dignity and self-esteem.
Welfare Benefits (EU Citizens)
Christopher Chope Excerpts(11 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr McCrea, and to know that my hon. Friend the Minister will respond to the debate. I hope he will answer all the questions I ask.
The topic of this afternoon’s debate is very important to people not only in my constituency, but in many others. Almost all the British public are concerned, because too many British citizens are out of work, and taxpayers resent their money being used to fund welfare for foreigners. That is why my constituents wish to restrict access to out-of-work benefits that are currently being paid to non-UK nationals from other EU countries. I think that is the wish of the vast majority of the British people, and also, I hope, of our Government. Whatever the gravity of the situation now, it is nothing like as bad as it will be after 1 January next year, when the group of non-UK nationals from other EU countries will include Romanians and Bulgarians, who hitherto have been prevented from getting full access to welfare benefits and the employment market.
Does the Minister agree with the basic proposition that if someone from another European country decides to move to the United Kingdom, they should not expect to receive taxpayer-funded assistance for their housing, health care, education or living expenses? Does he accept that freedom of movement under the EU treaties should be defined as being a freedom to leave, as well as to arrive? If a person who is a non-British EU national cannot afford to live in the United Kingdom without recourse to taxpayer-funded services, should not that person return to his own EU country, rather than rely on UK taxpayer handouts?
How much money is being spent on those handouts? Unfortunately, the Government cannot tell us, because, as the Minister told the House in a written answer,
“the UK’s benefit payment systems do not currently record details of a claimant’s nationality. Looking forward, the Government is considering ways of recording nationality and immigration status of migrants who make a claim to universal credit”.—[Official Report, 14 January 2013; Vol. 556, c. 466W.]
I think it will come as a shock to many that after three years of a Government led by a Prime Minister who says that he is determined to take action on this subject, we have not even begun to collect the most basic information necessary to inform public debate. When are we going to start? Why can we not start right now and record the nationality of people when they claim benefits?
Only two months ago, the Prime Minister assured us that he was going to get tough on benefits being claimed by foreigners in the United Kingdom. A month ago, the Home Secretary, along with her counterparts from Germany, Austria and Holland, wrote to Alan Shatter, president of the EU Justice and Home Affairs Council, demanding tighter restrictions on immigrants’ access to welfare handouts and other state-funded services.
We are told that the Prime Minister is actively engaged in negotiating a new relationship between the British people and the European Union. I asked him a written question for answer on Monday this week about his top priorities for reforming the UK’s relationship with the EU. Unfortunately, the Prime Minister transferred the question to the Foreign Office, and the Minister for Europe’s reply makes no mention whatsoever of either welfare or immigration as being among the top priorities for reforming our relationship with the EU. That is despite a recent ComRes/Open Europe poll showing that 55% of voters regard those issues as a top priority, and despite the Prime Minister’s recent speeches in which he has indicated that he also sees them as a top priority.
I shall be grateful if the Minister can explain in detail which aspects of access to British taxpayer-funded welfare are currently being negotiated in the EU. What is the state of those negotiations, their time scale, their prospects for success and why, at the moment, are they not a top priority for our Prime Minister?
Please can the Minister also explain how confident he is that we can resolve the issue to our satisfaction, when the European Union Commission is saying that the UK, far from being too generous in welfare payouts to foreigners, is not being generous enough? That was the effect of the decision six days ago, on Thursday 30 May, by the EU Commission, when it announced that it is launching a prosecution against the United Kingdom in the European Court of Justice, because we have different and less favourable rules for access to out-of-work benefits for EU nationals, compared with British citizens. Even the EU-loving Financial Times described, in its leader on 31 May, the EU Commission as having
“lobbed a hand grenade into the political discussion about Britain’s membership of the EU”.
Does that episode not illustrate perfectly the utter contempt in which the EU Commission holds Ministers in our elected Government? In the 20 months since the EU Commission first threatened such action, there has been much huffing and puffing by our Government, but all apparently to no avail. If it has taken 20 months to make zero progress with the Commission on that issue, what hope is there that other issues we wish to renegotiate will be dealt with any quicker or with any greater success?
The background to the debate is the question I asked the Minister on 20 May, which was, what steps are the Government taking to reduce the eligibility to United Kingdom benefits of nationals of other European Union states? In his careful response, he told me:
“We are strengthening the habitual residence test; the Home Office is creating a statutory presumption that European economic area jobseekers and workers who are involuntarily unemployed will not have a right to reside here after six months unless they can demonstrate they are actively seeking work and have a genuine chance of finding a job; and we will prevent those with no entitlement to work in the UK from claiming contributory benefits.”
Analysing each element of the Minister’s response in turn, one can see the credibility gap between his precise words and the overall impression of toughness, which I am sure he was seeking to give. The habitual residence test was introduced on 1 August 1994. I recall my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley), as Secretary of State for Social Security, telling the Conservative party conference in 1993 that he wanted to curb spending on benefit tourists. It is almost 20 years later, and have we succeeded in doing so? No. The situation has got worse rather than better. This coming weekend, it will be 30 years since I was first elected to the House, and it is a pity that all I have to report over those 30 years is a continuing decline in UK sovereignty, and ever more powers and decisions over our lives being taken away from us by the EU, despite the brave words of successive Ministers.
In 2004, the habitual residence test was supplemented with the requirement that a person has to satisfy a preliminary test of a right to reside in the UK, but that does not apply to EU and European economic area nationals who are classed as workers or self-employed persons under EC directive 2004/38 and the family members of such persons. On analysis, therefore, how is the Minister proposing to strengthen the habitual residence test, and how will it do anything to reduce the eligibility of nationals of other EU member states to access UK benefits? It does not seem to me as though it will achieve anything.
The second point that the Minister made in his answer, about jobseekers and workers who are involuntarily unemployed having to leave after six months, invites the question as to what is meant by “involuntarily unemployed”. How will one assess whether they have a genuine chance of finding a job? Are we going to introduce a language test? If so, how would that be compatible with current EU legislation? What about those who are self-employed, such as Romanian Big Issue sellers?
The third part of the Minister’s answer is perhaps the most disingenuous. He says that
“we will prevent those with no entitlement to work in the UK from claiming contributory benefits.”—[Official Report, 20 May 2013; Vol. 563, c. 890.]
How many people fall into that category? Every EU national who moves to the United Kingdom has the same entitlement to benefits as a UK national, regardless of their previous tax or national insurance contributions. That principle applies, without qualification, to all those who are “workers” or self-employed, while the qualification of “worker” is so broad as to include those not working but purportedly seeking work. Would it be unfair and going too far to summarise the Minister’s position as tantamount to an admission of impotence in the face of this crucial issue?
Let me emphasise that I do not blame the Minister at all, but do not his answers and the concerns of the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions amount to little more than spitting against the wind and grandstanding? What prospect is there of being able to change the European Union treaties to enable us to discriminate on the grounds of nationality in the way in which we distribute our welfare payments? Indeed, what is parliamentary sovereign democracy if it is not about the ability to treat our own citizens differently from the citizens of other countries?
One of the fundamental freedoms that lie at the heart of the EU treaties is “freedom of movement”. That was sold to the British people on the basis that we would be able to move to another country in the EU without impediment. We would be able to work there and live there and, through reciprocity, citizens of other EU countries could do the same in the United Kingdom. But what has happened is that, as with so many other aspects of the United Kingdom’s relationship with the European Union, freedom of movement has been applied as if to a federal superstate where there is no distinction between a British citizen and a Romanian or Bulgarian. The European Union Commission has continued to apply its ratchet of integration—ever closer union—systematically undermining our ability even to decide to whom we give British taxpayer-funded services.
Does this issue not illustrate the fundamental chasm between the European Union and us? The European Union sees itself as one country, with all its citizens sharing the same European nationality. Meanwhile, the United Kingdom sees itself as one of 27 separate countries within a free trade area, but with control over its own destiny and, in the context of this debate, control over those to whom it does and does not pay taxpayer-funded benefits. Does this not illustrate perfectly why my noble Friends Lords Lawson and Forsyth and Michael Portillo, all former Cabinet Ministers with a wealth of experience in negotiating with the European Union, are spot-on in pointing out the utter futility of the renegotiation exercise on which the Prime Minister has embarked? Does this saga not illustrate graphically the extent to which this Parliament has lost control over the most basic elements of national policy?
The starting point for the right to vote in a UK parliamentary election is being a British citizen. Citizenship confers privileges for citizens over non-citizens. Why cannot the same basic principles apply to the allocation of taxpayer-funded welfare benefits? Please can the Minister tell me how we will be able to restore control over our own affairs and give preference to our own citizens over foreigners without leaving the European Union? It seems to me that actions such as we have seen from the European Commission in recent days are driving more and more people to the conclusion that there is no alternative but to leave the European Union and that we would be much better off out, and in control of our own destiny.
There is a big issue about the fact that the European Union originally started off with a whole lot of countries that each had relatively similar standards of living, but now there are countries that are new entrants, particularly Bulgaria and Romania, where the standard of living is infinitesimal compared with that which we are lucky enough to enjoy in this country.
Figures I have obtained from the Library show that the annual household net income of a single-earner couple on the average wage with two children in 2011 was, using purchasing power parity exchange rates, €31,616 in the United Kingdom but only €7,750 in Bulgaria and even less—€7,514—in Romania. That means we have an average annual household net income of more than four times that of citizens in Bulgaria and Romania, so why will the Bulgarians and the Romanians not come to the United Kingdom in large numbers from next January? Apparently, there are already about 1 million of them in Spain, so it will not be very expensive for them to get here from Spain if they want to do so, and once they get here, unless something is done to the existing rules, they will basically have free access to as many benefits as they choose to apply for. They can come. They can try to get work. Even if they are unsuccessful at getting work, they can say that they are trying to get work and then access our benefits system. That can include other benefits that they can then export back to their families in their own countries. Is this not a state of complete farce? Have the Government grasped the political significance and importance of it?
Answering questions in the careful way that the Minister has answered them is absolutely right, because he wants to be intellectually honest in answering them, but could he also ensure that much fuller answers are given and that the areas where we obviously do not have any control at the moment are highlighted? I hope that as a result of this debate, he will assure us that the Prime Minister is serious about trying to do something about all this and that it is not just huffing and puffing, because we cannot carry on like this. There was 20 months between the European Commission saying that it was going to start taking infraction proceedings against us, and the matter now being referred to the Court. Will it take two years—three years?—before the Court decides? Many of us hope that we will have an in/out referendum long before then, but in any event, does this not show that the whole renegotiation process is a complete charade?
One example can be worth a thousand generalities, and the example highlighted in this short Adjournment debate is one the Government need to take really seriously.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Mr Mark Hoban)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) on securing the debate and trying to highlight some of the challenging issues we have to deal with. The Government are rightly concerned that our rules on migrants’ access to benefits should be robust. We already have strong rules to protect the taxpayer and the public purse from abuse and fraud. Those rules are fair and just, and I think they are entirely consistent with the freedom of EU citizens to work and to look for work here—I will come back to the issue of those who come here with no intention of working and the controls that are in place in that regard. The rules rightly ensure that migrants cannot get benefits if they have never worked here and have no intention of doing so.
Let me set out a bit of the background to assist my hon. Friend. European law says that an EU citizen can move to another member state if they are a worker, self-employed or a student, if they are seeking work or if they are self-sufficient. When EU nationals come to work in the hotels and guest houses of Bournemouth and Christchurch, it is that right that they are exercising, in the same way that UK nationals exercise their right when they go and work in other European Union countries.
European law also says that we must treat EU nationals who come here to work in the same way as we treat British nationals. We comply with that principle. EU nationals who work here and then lose their job can claim jobseeker’s allowance and housing benefit and, if they are temporarily unwell and unable to work, they can claim employment and support allowance.
EU nationals who come here to seek work are expected under EU law to be actively seeking work and to have a genuine chance of getting a job, and if they do, we say that they can claim jobseeker’s allowance. When people try to claim JSA, we apply a fair test to assess whether they are genuinely here to seek work—the habitual residence test. That test is applied to jobseekers whether they are EU nationals or UK nationals.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that no member state can afford to support migrants who have no intention of working and contributing economically to the community in which they choose to live. There is no requirement under EU law to provide such support, nor should there be. EU law has not sought to harmonise benefit regimes, nor should it. As he rightly points out, those are matters for national Governments. Member states have their own benefit regimes, some of which are more or less generous to their citizens than ours. It is easy to see why some people feel that they can move, not to work, but to take advantage of what they think is more generous welfare support in another country.
EU law sets out rules for co-ordination between member states to ensure that people who are genuinely exercising their free movement rights are not disadvantaged. There is no free movement right for those who are economically inactive and have no intention of working but want to be supported by state funds. We cannot be expected to support those who move just to take advantage of different benefit regimes, and the public are rightly concerned that that is what would happen if we were not allowed to check the legal basis for someone’s residence in this country, which is the basis of the infraction proceedings against us.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend the Minister uses the expression “no intention of working”, but all they need to do is show that they are applying for jobs and that they hope to be able to work. It is very hard to prove that they are not intending to work, particularly when his Department does not even have the information on whether they are British nationals.
Mr Hoban
I just say to my hon. Friend that when someone seeks to claim jobseeker’s allowance, they go through vigorous tests to identify whether they are looking for work. The only basis on which people receive benefit is by demonstrating that they are looking for work, which is why we have the habitual residence test. It tests not whether someone has popped across on holiday and decided to sign on while they are here, but whether they have any real intention to be here and work. That is why we ask a range of questions and why we are trying to strengthen the test, which I shall come on to in a moment. It was one of the commitments the Prime Minister made. I want to say more about the habitual residence test and the infraction process.
The Commission says that we discriminate against EU citizens when we apply the habitual residence test. We believe that we are following EU law correctly when we apply those rules. Rules in the residence directive explicitly allow us to protect our national finances and prevent migrants from becoming an unreasonable burden on our welfare system. When we ask people to satisfy the habitual residence test, we do so not on the basis of their nationality but on the basis that they have moved to the UK from abroad, even if they have previously lived here. We do so to protect our system from abuse. Why would a member state not want to protect its benefit system from abuse by checking that someone is legally resident before they make a claim? The advocate-general of the European Court, in giving his opinion on an Austrian case called Brey, said that
“the Court has held in various circumstances that Member States may require lawful residence before granting social assistance benefits, providing that such a requirement complies with EU law.”
That is exactly what we do when we assess someone’s right to reside as part of our habitual residence test. We treat each case on its own merits and consider the individual circumstances of the claimant. Our test is fair; it legitimately requires that a benefit claimant has a reasonable right of residence here and a degree of interconnection with and integration into UK society.
This is not the first time that someone has sought to challenge the habitual residence test. We have already successfully defended challenges to our test in our Supreme Court and the domestic courts. They found that the habitual residence test does not discriminate on the grounds of nationality and that its use is justified because it protects the public finances of the UK and prevents benefit claims by people who have no intention of working here at all. My concern and that of the Government, and the reason why we are fighting the case, is that if the Commission is successful in arguing its interpretation of the rules, it will open a new door that will mean that member states can no longer check that migrants meet national residence laws, thus extending free movement to inactive migrants who believe they can move to any member state and get social assistance benefits soon after arriving. That cannot be right, which is why the Government, the Secretary of State and I are determined to defend the test. We believe that we have strong grounds to win the argument in the Court.
My hon. Friend mentioned the measures that the Prime Minister announced to strengthen our position. I shall highlight two announcements, the first of which was on time-limited access to benefits. Under EU law, someone has a right to reside as a worker or a jobseeker only if they are “continuing to seek employment” and have a
“genuine chance of being engaged”.
It is not unreasonable to take the view that if someone has not found a job within six months, that right should terminate. At the moment, we expect that most jobseekers will find a job within six months. The Home Office will amend the regulations to create a statutory presumption that EEA nationals who are coming to look for work in the UK or who have lost their job will no longer be exercising their free movement right of residence as a jobseeker after six months, unless, in line with EU law, they demonstrate that they are actively seeking work and have a genuine chance of getting a job. Most jobseekers will find work quite quickly—within six months. It is hard to demonstrate after six months that they have a genuine chance of getting a job.
The other announcement was on strengthening the habitual residence test. We will continue our work to ensure that our decision making when assessing whether someone satisfies the test is consistent and fair. We are improving the test, as the Prime Minister said, by increasing the range and depth of evidence that advisers collect from claimants and making it easier for advisers to tailor the questions to someone’s circumstances. Those improvements will support our argument that our test is robust and that our decisions are fair and comply with EU law.
My hon. Friend asked about language skills and the assessment of the genuine chance of finding a job. We will assess whether language skills are a barrier to work, as part of the habitual residence test—it is built into the test. He also commented on the fact that we are in discussions with our European neighbours. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has been in Germany to meet his opposite number, the Deputy Interior Minister. The Home Secretary will raise these issues with other Interior Ministers at the Justice and Home Affairs Council over the next week. I am going to the Netherlands this evening to talk to my opposite number about how we can work together more closely. There are clear concerns in a number of member states that the Commission is seeking to extend its influence in this area and subvert the right of free movement, which is widely supported in member states. We need to continue to work with our allies, demonstrate a need for change and recognise the concerns expressed across a wide number of member states about the Commission’s role.
My hon. Friend started his speech by talking about the broader issues of access. I am sure that he will welcome the immigration Bill announced in the Queen’s Speech, which will tighten access to the NHS and controls on private landlords letting property to tenants from overseas. The Government are taking steps to tighten access to not only welfare benefits but other public services, which is an important part of our approach.
Mr Chope
Does my hon. Friend not agree that it would be much better if we could do all that under our own control? If we were outside the European Union, we would be able to make such decisions ourselves, instead of being beholden to the European Commission, which, from the way he has described the infraction proceedings, is wholly intransigent. I sympathise with him. For all the effort he is making, he is banging his head against a brick wall; there is no give on the part of the European Commission. Does there not come a time when the British people have to say, “Enough’s enough. If you do not concede anything, we will leave”?
Mr Hoban
My hon. Friend is being uncharacteristically defeatist. We can make progress, which is why we are engaging with other member states. The support among other member states—we were party to the Brey case—demonstrates to the Commission how much concern there is. Member states can take the initiative to change the regulations, and we need to demonstrate to the Commission that there is support for that. I fully support the Prime Minster’s policy. We need to have the renegotiation and put the outcome of that renegotiation to the people in a referendum when we win the next general election. That is the right approach. We need to build alliances with other member states; we are not alone in our concerns. My hon. Friend will be relieved to know that other member states share his concerns exactly.
I hope that from my remarks this afternoon my hon. Friend sees that the Government are actively taking steps to protect our position not only in domestic law, by strengthening the habitual residence test through the new rules and the presumption about someone being out of work for six months, but by defending the matter strongly in the Court and building alliances with other EU countries. Our approach is right.
Oral Answers to Questions
Christopher Chope Excerpts(11 years, 8 months ago)
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Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
8. What steps he plans to take to restrict access to benefits for new migrants from other EU member states.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
14. What steps he is taking to reduce the eligibility to UK benefits of nationals of other EU member states.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Mr Mark Hoban)
We are taking steps to tighten further the rules relating to all migrants, not just new migrants. We are strengthening the habitual residence test; the Home Office is creating a statutory presumption that European economic area jobseekers and workers who are involuntarily unemployed will not have a right to reside here after six months unless they can demonstrate they are actively seeking work and have a genuine chance of finding a job; and we will prevent those with no entitlement to work in the UK from claiming contributory benefits.
Mr Hoban
My hon. Friend is aware that we are, in part, operating within a framework determined by the European Union. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State met his German counterpart last week, and further meetings are planned for next month with European employment Ministers to discuss these very issues.
Welfare Reform (Disabled People and Carers)
Christopher Chope Excerpts(12 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Christopher Chope (in the Chair)
Owing to the interest in this debate, it will be necessary to impose a time limit on speeches. I shall decide what that will be after the hon. Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) has finished his speech.
Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)
I am happy to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Chope.
Today’s debate, I hope, will categorically highlight the unfairness of the Government’s welfare reform agenda on disabled people, their carers and families. I urge the Department for Work and Pensions, in collaboration with the Minister for disabled people, the hon. Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey), to conduct a cumulative impact assessment on the real-term effects of welfare reform on some of the most vulnerable people in our society. I was urged by a number of groups to try to secure today’s debate. The importance of the debate and the issues within it is reflected by the number of hon. Members present this afternoon. I am gratified, and I thank my hon. Friends for coming along to support this debate.
The Chancellor and the Prime Minister have repeatedly lectured us about the need for fairness and said that we are all in this together. However, as I hope to demonstrate conclusively in this debate, it is not the richest, most powerful or most able in our society who will pay the price of the Government’s calculation and uncaring disregard, but the least able, most vulnerable and least powerful—the disabled.
I am sure that hon. Members will have read, or at least heard of, the report, “The Tipping Point”, by the Hardest Hit campaign, which concluded:
“Many disabled people feel that they are living on the edge, and that the loss of even a small amount of income could tip their already complex lives into greater dependence and insecurity.”
This summer, the Hardest Hit coalition surveyed more than 4,500 disabled people on their views and experiences of the welfare and social care systems. It also conducted a series of 50 in-depth interviews with disabled people and a poll of more than 350 independent welfare advisers. From the study, it discovered that disabled people and their families are struggling to make ends meet and feel increasingly nervous about the future. The Government need to act urgently to arrest the slide of disabled people into entrenched isolation and poverty.
Disabled people have experienced a massive drop in income—about £500 million—since the emergency Budget of 2010. Recent reports have shown that just in the past year, cuts for typical disabled households ranged from £200 to just over £2,000. The latest estimates suggest that disabled people will experience £9 billion of cuts over the lifetime of this Parliament—half the total cuts to the welfare budget.
Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. The interest here today shows how concerned we all are, as are the people we see in our constituencies. I share my hon. Friend’s concern. I wonder whether people will simply be reassessed and reassessed until they no longer qualify for the benefit. I want to raise the case of a constituent of mine, a terminally ill constituent—
Mr Christopher Chope (in the Chair)
Order. This is an intervention. If you wish to make a speech in due course, you can catch my eye, make a speech, and refer to individual cases.
Mr Christopher Chope (in the Chair)
Order. You cannot, because this is an intervention. I ask you to resume your seat. If we allow interventions to be too long, it will inevitably take time away from other people. The hon. Gentleman introducing the debate is not in a position to comment on individual constituency cases.
Ian Mearns
Returning to “The Tipping Point” report, it found that 84% of disabled people believe that losing their DLA would drive them into isolation and into struggling to manage their condition. Nine in 10 disabled people fear that losing their DLA would be detrimental to their health.
Mr Christopher Chope (in the Chair)
Order. Owing to the number of people who wish to participate, I shall limit the time for speeches to four minutes. If there are a lot of interventions, it may be necessary to reduce that time. The wind-ups will start at 3.40 pm.
Sir Tony Baldry
I will not.
As I understand it, carer’s allowance will be linked to receipt of either rate of the daily living component of PIP. Is that correct? Obviously, it is important to ensure that people caring for those with greatest needs get the appropriate level of support, and disabled people clearly face extra costs. Am I right in thinking that households receiving DLA, PIP or the support component of the employment and support allowance will and should be exempt from the benefit cap? Have I got that right?
Will housing benefit regulations recognise that some people need an additional room for an overnight carer who lives elsewhere? To go back to the exchanges in the main Chamber earlier this week, am I right that significantly adapted accommodation will receive additional discretionary housing payments funding of some £30 million from 2013-14 to cover that group and foster carers, and that local authorities will have a fair amount of discretion about how that is applied?
Universal credit should provide support for carers and improve their opportunities to maintain links with, and get back into, the world of work.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) on bringing the matter to the House. I thank him, because it is one that is close to my heart, for two reasons. The first is personal, because my brother, Keith, had an accident in which he received serious brain injuries. He had many years of rehabilitation, and although it did not mean he could lead the independent life he once had, he can have some sort of independent life, because of his carers and my parents. My parents give as much help as they can, but my mother is 81 and my father is 83, so they will be able to give less and less help. There will be greater emphasis on the NHS and what it does through carers, but also on the DLA award that helps Keith to have carers in the house on a more permanent basis. He relies on the award to pay for the help he needs. If that were to change—I hope that the Minister is taking this on board—his quality of life would change dramatically. He would have to go to a health facility elsewhere.
Is my brother the only person in my constituency to whom that has happened? Of course not: there are hundreds—indeed, thousands—who fit into that category. All over the country people have made me aware of that. Some of the hon. Members present for the debate attended Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson’s inquiry. In her report she has said that
“230,000 severely disabled people who do not have another adult to assist them could receive between £28 and £58 a week less”.
Also,
“100,000 disabled children stand to lose up to £28 a week”
and 116,000 disabled people who work risk losing up to £40 per week from payments towards additional costs of being disabled. Clearly, those figures cannot be ignored. Those are the facts of the case and that is how things will happen. A recent newspaper comment said:
“DLA helps disabled people to manage some of their own care needs; without this support, they could increasingly rely on family members.”
Yes, that is so if the family members are alive and accessible. If not, that cannot happen.
Other hon. Members have mentioned Carers UK and the Hardest Hit survey. Three in 10 disabled people stated that without DLA their care would not work. The figures are clear. Family carers provide an unmatched service in the United Kingdom, saving the Government millions upon millions of pounds each year. The Government must address care-in-the-home needs. There is only so much that families can do and while we are trying to save money care in the community cannot bear the brunt, but that is what is happening. Private care companies are under pressure and have less money available to them. That means that elderly people are living in unfit conditions, and much more is required of their carers.
Many young and single-parent families find it very difficult to cope. Young mothers try their best to do without the absent father, but they cannot juggle taking care of the home as well as looking after children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. There are many in that situation in my constituency, and that will be true of the constituencies of many other hon. Members. Those mothers have particular problems, trying to hold down a job of 16 to 20 hours a week to qualify for help, and they are under tremendous strain, which in turn leads to breakdowns in their health. Voluntary sector groups used to fill the gap, and sometimes they can, but mostly they cannot. Such a mother is under pressure, worried about DLA and the effect on her son, and about her increasing child care costs. Those problems multiply. I want to make a quick mention of Home-Start, a charity at home in my constituency and many others, which does marvellous work and can look after a child for a year for £422. Where else could anyone get that?
In conclusion, there is a degree of penny wise, pound foolish about what is happening—saving money in the short term, while in the long term there will be no saving. Worse, in the long term families will be pulled apart, disabled people will be isolated and the community will not function as it could, all because the big picture was not looked at. I urge the Minister to rethink the reform at this stage, consider its impact on individual lives, and put in place an efficiency package that saves money without doing it at the expense of decent quality of life.
Mr Christopher Chope (in the Chair)
I will reduce the time limit to three minutes now.
Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for giving way when time is so short. I have listened carefully to everything she has said, and what I do not understand, at the end of it, is this: why will disabled people be financially worse off, when she says that everything in the garden is rosy? I truly do not understand how she can say that, when every day on which we have a surgery we face people coming in to say how they are suffering under the Government’s policies. I do not understand—
Esther McVey
Once universal credit has been introduced, many disabled families will receive more support than they do now, with the higher rate of support for all disabled children who are registered blind, for example. Households with one or more disabled adults will keep up to £647 a month—some £7,000 a year—of their earnings before seeing any reduction. Universal credit also offers a more flexible system for people whose condition and ability to work fluctuate. No one whose circumstances remain the same will lose out in cash terms as a direct result of the move to universal credit—there will be protection.
As we have talked about the cumulative impact, I will say that we have published impact assessments on reforms to workplace pensions, the child support regulations, automatic enrolment, PIP, universal credit and the benefit cap—the list continues. Labour embarked on a number of reforms, including moving from incapacity benefit to employment and support allowance, the introduction of local housing, and changes for lone parents, on which no cumulative impact assessments were done, as the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) and the right hon. Member for Stirling (Mrs McGuire) said. It would have been far simpler to do a cumulative impact assessment, but because of the shift and the fact that the measures will not be in place until 2017-18 we have taken the advice that such an assessment would not be possible in its entirety. These are principled reforms, and we should all be proud that we are delivering them.
Welfare Reform Bill
Christopher Chope Excerpts(13 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Chris Grayling
My hon. Friend makes an important point. That is something that we need to address, because the current situation is not right. We need to ensure that the system is fair and justifiable in the eyes of taxpayers and other individuals. I share some of her anxieties, and although it is not in my remit to pursue the issue, I am sure that she will make her representations elsewhere in Government. It is not that we want to do anything that undermines that publication or others in a similar position; rather, we want to ensure that the position is not only fair and equitable, but defensible and justifiable.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
My right hon. Friend knows that I have expressed some concerns about this issue in the past. Can he give us an assurance that self-employed income will be based on actual income, rather than deemed income? Linking self-employed income with an assumption that people are earning the minimum wage would effectively put most farmers in this country the wrong side of the line, because probably most of them earn less per annum than they would if they were paid the minimum wage for the hours they work. The same goes for young barristers, lots of people in the carpentry and building trade, and others building up businesses. Surely the system should be based either on actual earnings or on something else. If it is based on something else, that surely needs to be spelt out clearly, because there are rumours circulating that we are effectively imposing a minimum wage by the back door on self-employed people.
Oral Answers to Questions
Christopher Chope Excerpts(14 years ago)
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Mr Duncan Smith
We constantly discuss, in Cabinet and other forums, the idea of what we are doing with the voluntary sector and how we can best help and support it. We are putting a lot of money behind the voluntary sector right now, and the Work programme will make a significant amount of money available to the sector through back-to-work programmes. Of course there are difficulties in the sector, as some local councils choose to start with voluntary organisations when they make their reductions. Personally, I often wonder whether local councils too often see the voluntary sector as an add-on, rather than as an incredibly effective and integral way of delivering good services, and I hope that they will think again about some of those changes.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
16. What account his Department takes of the effects of the level of the minimum wage in its business planning processes.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)
Departmental business planning processes take account of the minimum wage in the potential effect on the future pay bill and in departmental contracts. For some years, the Department for Work and Pensions has targeted pay awards towards our lower paid staff, and the lowest level of pay for directly employed DWP staff is currently £7.27 an hour compared with the 2010 national minimum wage of £5.93 an hour.
Chris Grayling
I have to say that I do not share my hon. Friend’s view. What I would say to employers up and down the country is that I hope they will take advantage of the increased numbers of apprenticeships that are paid at special apprenticeship rates in order to allow people to develop the skills they need to build future careers.