Autumn Statement Resolutions

Claudia Webbe Excerpts

Monday 27th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Claudia Webbe (Leicester East) (Ind)]

The Chancellor’s autumn statement is yet another assault on the poor, long-term sick and disabled—one that is both deadly and economically illiterate. Thirteen years of Conservative policies have caused untold misery for the poor, and especially for disabled people, and have been linked to hundreds of thousands of excess deaths. A University of Glasgow study last year found that more than 330,000 excess deaths were the result of austerity, and that austerity had not just halted the decades-long increase in UK life expectancy, but thrown it into complete reverse, especially among poor people. Rather than respond to the appalling effects of those policies by changing course, the Government are now intensifying their attack on the poor, sick and disabled, scapegoating and demonising them for the Government’s failure to grow the economy.

This country already has by far the worst out-of-work benefits of any comparable European nation and one of the harshest conditionality regimes, yet the Chancellor will now punish claimants for not engaging with state-sanctioned coercive therapy while the Government usurp the role of medical experts in deciding who is fit for work. Capitalism and oppression rely on the exploitation of human labour, and it seems that not even the exploitation of disabled people’s labour is off the table in the competitive drive to accumulate even more wealth for the rich. People’s wellbeing is a secondary concern for capitalism, and oppression through vicious sanction is the necessary corollary.

The escalation of the already punitive sanctions regime will see the working class, including the long-term sick, cut off even from support with healthcare. The awful consequences of those moves are not hard to predict, especially for those with long-term complex health conditions or disabilities, or those suffering poor mental health.

As long ago as 2014, NHS data showed that more than four in 10 people claiming out-of-work disability benefits—more than double the figure from the previous survey—had attempted suicide because of the punishing and attritional fit-for-work regime. Under successive Conservative Governments, the treatment of disabled people has been so horrific that the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities condemned the UK for creating “a human catastrophe”. To the shame of this Government, the UK has 14 million people in poverty, well over 4 million of them children. Children from families with a disabled or long-term sick member are more than twice as likely to live in poverty. That figure was measured before the impact of the pandemic and the cost of living crisis.

The Government claim that the sanctions they intend to apply in cutting off universal credit to the poor will not be applied to those with children or to people with disabilities, but medical professionals and disability campaigners point out that, based on the Government’s track record, the new regime will clearly be used to legitimise discrimination against people with chronic illnesses or disabilities. That is unequivocally against the European convention on human rights, but also fundamentally counterproductive.

As economists have pointed out, it is overwhelmingly clear that if we want to grow the economy, we need to redistribute wealth, invest in communities and put more money into the pockets of the poor, the working classes and the worst-off, because they will spend it locally and increase economic activity. Instead, the Chancellor has announced tax cuts for the wealthy and for corporations—money that will end up in offshore bank accounts, where it does nothing for our economy. This latest assault on the poor and disabled will do the opposite of what the Chancellor claims to be trying to achieve.

Our country desperately needs politicians who put physical, emotional and economic health above an ideological commitment to helping the rich and hitting the poor, the sick and the disabled. Tragically for the millions of struggling poor people in this country, the Chancellor and the Prime Minister are again doing the opposite of what they need. The Government’s proposals are part of an ideological attack on the working class. The Chancellor’s statement betrays those who most need help. It is simply unfit for purpose.

Universal Credit Deductions

Claudia Webbe Excerpts

Wednesday 19th July 2023 Westminster Hall

[Claudia Webbe (Leicester East) (Ind)]

Thank you, Dame Maria, for allowing me to speak. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship. I want to congratulate my friend, the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens), on securing this very important debate.

The UK is a country shamed by the poverty of millions of its people, yet this Government sadly seem endlessly able to find ways to penalise and humiliate people for being poor. There are 14.5 million people in this country living in poverty, with many of them claiming universal credit, and in the middle of a cost of living crisis, the DWP is making deductions from a staggering 45% of claimants. My constituents in Leicester East face deductions significantly above the national average. As we have heard, around half of the deductions imposed on claimants are for advanced payments, which they are forced to request because the universal credit system is constructed to deprive claimants—already in need—of support for at least the first five weeks following their claim.

A survey by the TUC found that 86% of universal credit claimants had been put into financial difficultly because of the mandatory waiting period. Those are figures from 2020, before the current cost of living crisis. Financial difficulty has caused “immense misery”, resulting in

“many being forced into debt, relying on food banks or going without food. Many said it had impacted their mental health through stress and anxiety and that they had felt degraded by the process.”

Claimants in need are then forced to pay back advance payments at a rate of up to a quarter of the already meagre support that they receive through universal credit, prolonging and intensifying their hardship. I thank the hon. Member for Glasgow South West for tabling his important written question. In his answer, the Minister claimed that the payments are “not a debt”. The deduction at source from a paltry benefit—just £747 a month on average based on the figures provided by the Minister—certainly makes it look like a debt, handled in just the same way as debts to other bodies.

The Government appear to have decided to structure the benefit in that way with the help and for the convenience of the DWP, simply because they can, putting people into hardship. That is an act of class warfare and a clear abuse of power. Advance payment deductions amount to about half the total monthly deductions from universal credit payments, exposing the fundamental, structural unfairness and harshness of the universal credit system.

To make a bleak picture even worse, the data provided by the Minister in his 4 July response to the written question asked on 29 June 2023 by the hon. Member for Glasgow South West shows that the amounts deducted do not include sanctions under the draconian conditionality regime. In the same period as the one covered by the Minister’s response, the latest official statistics report that 6.18% of claimants were under sanction, with 44,000 new adverse sanction decisions in a single month and a year-on-year increase of 2.5%.

As well as the directly inflicted hardship of applied sanctions, just under a third of claimants are in conditionality regimes and under the threat of sanctions. The regime means that tens of thousands of people, already struggling, are facing unbearable hardship and the abject terror that they could suddenly become penniless. However, last year, the Government blocked the release of data from an academic study to find out whether such deductions were linked to ill health, poor mental health, suicide or attempted suicide, despite having previously promised to provide it.

The evils of the current system are clear and beyond any reasonable dispute. This is class war; it is neoliberalism writ large. The aim is to punish and control working-class families, targeting the most vulnerable through increased social and material losses. To coin the term of Friedrich Engels, it is actually “social murder”. Advance payments that have to be repaid—which are a debt, whether or not the Minister chooses to term them as such—must urgently be replaced for those in dire need and in destitution by a system of non-repayable grants, to alleviate at least some of the onerous burden that the Government have placed for too long on the shoulders of those least able to bear it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Claudia Webbe]

Will the Minister give way?

[Guy Opperman]

No, I will not; I am so sorry. I do not think I want to dignify the hon. Lady with any further comment in this debate.

The practical reality of the situation is that we believe very strongly that individual claimants have the ability to receive support. I could go on about various points in respect of advances and the five-week wait. During their first assessment period, a new claimant can receive a payment up to the expected amount of their UC award, which can then be repaid over 24 months. It is not possible to make a payment as soon as a claim is made, and colleagues should understand that. The assessment period must run its course before the award of UC can be calculated. It would not be possible to accurately determine what a claimant’s entitlement will be in the month ahead. The process ensures that claimants are paid their correct entitlement, which is something we all wish to see, and prevents significant overpayments from occurring.

I welcome today’s debate, and I understand and share the concern of the hon. Member for Glasgow South West that we should ensure that we support the most vulnerable in society. I want to finish on a couple of key points. Much criticism is made of the situation in respect of long-standing poverty, but it is a long-standing principle of the Government that the most effective and sustainable way to tackle poverty is by supporting people into work and to progress. In 2021-22, working-age adults living in families in which all adults were working were seven times less likely than working-age adults in workless families to be in absolute poverty after housing costs, and we have made progress. In 2021-22, there were 1.7 million fewer people in absolute poverty after housing costs than in 2009-10, including 400,000 fewer children, with 1 million fewer workless households than in 2010.

Support exists on an ongoing basis and, as I say, there has never been a larger sum spent on those who are most vulnerable. The cost of living support continues into 2024, and I commend the Government’s approach to these issues.

Benefit Sanctions

Claudia Webbe Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2022 Westminster Hall

[Claudia Webbe (Leicester East) (Ind)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Pritchard. I thank the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) for securing this valuable and important debate.

The Government claim that evidence clearly shows that their sanctions regime is clear, fair and effective in getting people into work, so why are they hiding data from experts who want to study that effectiveness? Benefits sanctions are an utterly inhumane blunt instrument that have not been shown to be effective in their supposed aim. Instead, almost every study that has looked at the benefit sanctions regime seems to include the word “cruel”—indeed, it is “pointlessly cruel” according to a Select Committee report, and “cruel”, “inhumane” and “degrading” according to academics. That is what the experts conducting those studies have found.

The sanctions regime is enormously disproportionate and punitive: a complete withdrawal of support for missing a single jobcentre appointment. Examples of people sanctioned because of illness, a lack of wi-fi connectivity or other reasons outside their control are easy to find. That cruelty can be imposed with little effective scrutiny for up to three years. The organisation Feeding Britain reported that in Leicester, one woman with two children was sanctioned after she missed appointments as a result of going to Iraq to look after her sick father. It left her in a terrible state, with bills and rent arrears. Another referral over the summer had his appointment with his work coach rearranged because the work coach was not in. He was then sanctioned because whoever was standing in for the work coach rearranged the appointment to be earlier, and he missed it.

The UK is an international outlier in this cruelty. Indeed, the UK is unique among OECD nations in using sanctions to punish claimants. A Bristol University Press publication on the impact of sanctions shows that they are largely ineffective and often make people more likely to remain out of work. This consciously cruel regime is operating at record levels—more than double its pre-pandemic numbers—in the middle of a cost of living crisis, and a huge number of working people in my constituency of Leicester East are being sanctioned for not accepting zero-hours contracts to top up their incomes.

Of course, the more vulnerable a claimant, the greater the impact of this conscious cruelty. The Government cannot claim to be unaware of this, as they have been repeatedly warned by MPs, academics and advocate groups about the huge damage being done. Rethink Mental Illness recently called for an immediate halt to sanctions, with the group’s chief executive officer describing them as

“incredibly damaging to people’s mental health”

because of

“the massive financial and psychological impact”

of sanctions and of the fear that they might be imposed.

Speaking of the more than doubling of the number of sanctions, David Webster of the University of Glasgow said:

“A Universal Credit claimant is now more likely”—

in the midst of the worst cost of living crisis in living memory—

“to be under a sanction than to have Covid”,

which is a truly horrifying illustration. Dr Webster also accused the Government of withholding information about the scale of the crisis they have created. That is not a new phenomenon. As we have heard, in February the Government blocked access to data for academics who simply wanted simply to study whether benefit sanctions were driving up suicide rates, bringing a vital study that was already under way to an immediate halt. Even for the Conservative party, this is an astonishing level of disregard for people’s mental health and, indeed, for their lives. It is institutional cruelty.

It is time to end the culture of secrecy about the impacts and effectiveness of the Government’s benefit sanctions policy. Will the Minister commit the Government to releasing this data? It is an open secret that information already in the public domain showed that a staggering 43% of unemployed disability benefit claimants had attempted to take their own lives because of the horrors inflicted on them, and that was in 2018—long before the sanctions reached their current appalling high level.

Sanctions are indeed pointlessly cruel, inhumane and degrading. If the Government think that the facts show otherwise, why are they hiding them?

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

We now come to the Front Benchers, who have 10 minutes each. If the Minister is so minded, he might leave a minute for Chris Stephens to wind up.

Cost of Living Increases: Pensioners

Claudia Webbe Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Claudia Webbe (Leicester East) (Ind)]

Older people and pensioners are being disproportionately affected by the Government’s cost of living crisis. Office for National Statistics research shows that pensioner households are having to spend more per week than other age groups. With the energy price cap increasing and protections decreasing, a typical pensioner household’s bills will be fourfold what they were, just to keep warm. The ONS also found that a higher proportion of older people live in the least energy-efficient houses.

In September 2021, the Government announced that they intended to remove the earnings link to the state pension triple lock and downgrade to a double lock of prices or 2.5%, as they say they are unwilling to increase the state pension given the economic pressures of the pandemic being felt by other sectors of society. Today the Government say there will be no U-turn. They should properly clarify their position; they should commit to the triple lock now—not next year, now.

The Government uprated the state pension this April by 3.1%, less than half the forecast rate of inflation for this year. For an individual in receipt of the full state pension the reduction is nearly £400 a year in real terms. Rather than levelling down the state pension due to the cost of living crisis that they themselves are responsible for, the Government should abandon their zero-sum economic mindset, reinstate the triple lock and level up their economic support to all demographics, including full restitution to women born in the 1950s who have lost their pensions from the age of 60. And of course all of this should be funded through taxation on corporations and the super-rich.

From the 2023-24 financial year, around 1.3 million working pensioners will be asked to pay the health and social care levy, a 1.25% tax hike. Across the UK, there are around 1.3 million working pensioners who could face paying the levy, including 91,100 in the east midlands. This Government only raise funds by squeezing the struggling many, while allowing the astronomical wealth of the few to grow continually. The Government should scrap the national insurance hike and replace it with a wealth tax. Shamefully, after 12 years of Conservative government, there are half a million more pensioners living in poverty; the figure increased from 1.65 million in 2010 to over 2.1 million in 2020. The rate of pensioner poverty rose from 14% in 2010 to over 18% in the year before the pandemic. Age UK has also warned that an estimated 150,000 additional pensioner households are likely to be pushed into fuel poverty this winter, taking the number of fuel-poor older households to over 1.1 million this spring.

It is intolerable that the Government have presided over the normalisation of widespread pensioner poverty. They must act now to end the cost of living crisis and prevent the further impoverishment of older people and pensioners.

Coronavirus Outbreak: DWP Response

Claudia Webbe Excerpts

Thursday 26th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Claudia Webbe (Leicester East) (Ind)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) on securing this important debate. This report demonstrates how the coronavirus has exposed the critical shortcomings of our social security system, yet the report highlights issues that we have known about for a long time, such as the five-week wait for universal credit payment and the financial burden on claimants of repaying advance loans. The report also criticised the fact that the £20 increase in universal credit had not carried across to legacy benefits such as jobseeker’s allowance and employment and support allowance. That has resulted in people facing hardship as a result of the Government’s inhumanity. The Government must urgently level up their support.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies recently found that 4 million families face a significant decline in income if the Department for Work and Pensions goes ahead with its plan to scrap the £20 increase. It is deeply worrying that the Government are planning to cut universal credit amid an unprecedented economic crisis. That is especially concerning in Leicester East, as last month, over 5,000 of our residents claimed unemployment benefits—a figure that has more than doubled and has gone up by over 3,000 since the lockdown began in March. This means that our community’s unemployment rate is above the national average. It is also beyond belief that benefit sanctions resumed in July, during an unprecedented period of economic hardship.

The report highlights the impact of the callous “no recourse to public funds” condition during the pandemic, particularly on children. Thousands of UK residents who are undocumented and those who have no recourse to public funds have already been driven into destitution during this crisis. Recent Home Office statistics show that the number of migrants with no recourse to public funds who have applied for destitution funds increased dramatically by 572% in the months spanning the coronavirus crisis. This means that nearly 3,000 migrants facing total hardship could be waiting to hear whether they and their families will be able to avoid severe poverty—and that only includes the limited number of migrants who are aware of the destitution provision. Given the hostile environment for migrants, many do not know that they are eligible for any state support.

The statistics also reveal that it took the Home Office an unacceptable average of 30 days to decide on these life-or-death applications. This process must be considerably sped up, but better still, the concept of no recourse to public funds must be suspended for the duration of the pandemic at least. That would be the more humane approach to adopt. It is appalling that the Home Office does not even record the number of UK residents with no recourse to public funds, despite a recent intervention from the Office for Statistics Regulation, which expressed alarm at the Home Office’s repeated refusal to do so. It is contrary to reason to develop policy without knowing how many people the condition affects. The Government must adopt this most basic of tasks.

The report highlighted the performance of the Health and Safety Executive and its limited capacity to assess covid-secure workplaces. At the time of the report’s publication, the Health and Safety Executive had only shut down one workplace for covid-related reasons. As Members can imagine, this is particularly relevant for my community. One of the main reasons why worker exploitation in Leicester’s garment industry has been able to exist unchecked is that 10 years of austerity have severely downgraded our regulatory institutions. The Government have slashed the Health and Safety Executive’s budget by £100 million, or 46%, since 2010. Rights are meaningless if they are not properly enforced. The Government must therefore urgently reverse the funding cuts to regulatory bodies to ensure the safety and fair pay of those who work, and support our unions, which are championing them so excellently.

This Government’s cruelty over the past decade has transformed the Department for Work and Pensions into a symbol of fear. The coronavirus pandemic has further demonstrated the need for universal welfare support that we will be there to help and support people, not punish or police them. The Government must therefore empower the Department to act now to prevent the further impoverishment of working people and their families during the pandemic.