Personal Independence Payments

Clive Efford Excerpts

Wednesday 15th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

No, because I do not believe that to be the case. Of the many people who receive PIP, vast numbers find it satisfactory and a better benefit than DLA. Specifically on mental health conditions, far more people receive PIP than received DLA, so I just do not accept the hon. Gentleman’s basic analysis of the situation.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State guarantee that no PIP assessors are required to turn down a quota of their assessments? I find it impossible to understand some of the decisions they make. There can be an arm’s length of medical evidence in front of them, but they turn some people down, particularly those with mental health issues. If he does not know the answer, will he go away and investigate the situation? Something is wrong. So many examples have been given to him that he cannot dismiss them as the odd case.

[Damian Green]

I absolutely assure the hon. Gentleman that no pass or fail quota is given to any assessor.

Oral Answers to Questions

Clive Efford Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Vara]

If the hon. Lady has any specific information on that, I would be happy to receive it from her. We will be publishing the figures on the take-up of the Pension Wise service in due course, but I do not have them at the moment. It is a relatively new operation, and we need to give it some time. In relation to dealing with scams, we are working with the Financial Conduct Authority and we are seeking to stem these scams and any others that there might be.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

6. What assessment he has made of the effect of Government policies on the number of children living in poverty.

[Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central) (Lab)]

16. What representations he has received on changing the Government’s child poverty targets.

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

This Government are committed to working to eliminate child poverty and improve the life chances of children. Our approach is to focus on the root causes of poverty and not just on the symptoms, which will deliver the best improvement in children’s life chances. Our consultation on child poverty measurement in 2013 received more than 250 responses, capturing views across the spectrum from local authorities, charities, academics and members of the public.

[Clive Efford]

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for that answer, but children growing up in households where the parents are on the national minimum wage will see their household income cut next year by up to a maximum of £1,426. He punched the air when the announcement was made in the House in the Budget in July. Was he being incompetent or just callous when he did that? What is he going to do to deal with this cut in household incomes?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman did not notice that at the time of the Budget my right hon. Friend the Chancellor announced one of the biggest rises in the living wage. I make no apology for punching the air, because that was a huge announcement. This is the whole point: as we get people back to work, they should be earning more in work—rather than being paid for by taxpayers, they should be paid for by their businesses.

Oral Answers to Questions

Clive Efford Excerpts

Monday 8th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I am familiar with community travel providers; I have a number of excellent ones in my own constituency, including a couple of very good dial-a-ride services, namely Lydney Dial-a-Ride and Newent Dial-a-Ride. My hon. Friend makes a very good point. We currently aim for a one-and-a-half hour maximum travel distance by public transport, and I will ask my officials to look at whether we could work more closely with those community providers. My hon. Friend makes a very good point that is worth further study.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

It is no good the Minister coming here saying that he is very concerned about PIP and wants to do something about it. This has been going on for too long. Patients that suffer a downturn in their condition are suffering an extra 28-day delay and the Multiple Sclerosis Society says that that could lead to their missing out on up to £3,500. It is about time the Minister sorted this out, so what is he going to do about it?

[Mr Harper]

I do not think the hon. Gentleman was listening very carefully to the answer I gave to the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson). I set out that the assessment providers have hired more staff, that we have significantly increased the number of decisions we are making, and that backlogs are being reduced. I also set out very clearly the commitment made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, which I am working very hard to achieve.

Universal Credit

Clive Efford Excerpts

Wednesday 9th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State needs to understand that when we ask questions in the House, we expect frank, honest and accurate answers from the Government, but that is not what we have had. He suggests that Sir Bob Kerslake did not know what he was talking about when he gave his answers to the Public Accounts Committee. Will Sir Bob Kerslake correct the record, or are we being misled again?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I have been absolutely clear—I do not think I could have been clearer—that the strategic business plans for this Parliament have all been approved. [Interruption.] Would the hon. Gentleman like to let me finish? What Sir Bob Kerslake was referring to was the overarching full roll-out, including the years beyond this Parliament. I have already said that I and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury are about to finalise that, as approved.

Oral Answers to Questions

Clive Efford Excerpts

Monday 23rd June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

There is no doubt that the contract was taken out by the last Labour Administration. Her Majesty’s Opposition called for me to sack Atos. If we had done so, we would have had to pay it a huge amount of compensation, but, instead, it will pay substantial damages to the Government when the contract is terminated.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

20. Judge Robert Martin has said that Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service has seen a huge reduction in the number of work capability assessment appeals, not because of the quality of decisions, but because of the huge backlog and the quality of the service that is being provided.

[Mike Penning]

I am afraid that that is factually incorrect. I read Judge Martin’s comments, and I do not think that that is quite what he said. There has been a reduction of more than 80% in the number of people who are appealing. That is because better decisions are being made, which is right and proper for everyone.

Oral Answers to Questions

Clive Efford Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Grant]

Betting shops tend to be located in areas of high footfall. It is not at all clear that there is a link between area deprivation and problem gambling, but our ongoing review will assess the available evidence. We will report later this year on that matter.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Having stood shoulder to shoulder with the betting industry, the Government have been forced into a series of humiliating climbdowns in the Lords on virtually everything that we have been telling them that they must do—review of pre-watershed advertising, regulating spread betting, one-stop shop for self-exclusion and adopting the code of the Association of British Bookmakers as mandatory, having told us that that was unnecessary. I wonder whether the Minister ever feels that she is in office, but that we are running her Department. I have another instruction for the Minister: give councils the powers that they are calling for to limit the number of fixed odds betting terminals in their areas. Are the Government on the side of local people or of the betting industry?

[Mrs Grant]

I am staggered by the shadow Minister’s statement. He complains about the number of bookies on the high street and about the proliferation of FOBTs, yet it was his Government’s Gambling Act 2005 and liberalisation over 13 years—their relaxation of the rules—that put the country in the position that we are in now. I am afraid that I will take no lessons from him.

Housing Benefit

Clive Efford Excerpts

Wednesday 26th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

As the Secretary of State responsible for introducing the regulations in 1996, which interacted in an unforeseen way with the regulations last year, I must seek the House’s indulgence at not having recalled the detail of their text and drawn any possible problem to the attention of my successor. However, I assure the House that there was no intention of granting any long-term relief from a change of policy that I envisaged introducing if we had been re-elected and I had remained Secretary of State.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Lilley]

I will give way not at the moment.

The problem that we face is a huge shortage of housing. We have 1.85 million people on council waiting lists, up 800,000 since 1997. That should be no surprise, given that the previous Government allowed the population to increase by 3 million during that period, with virtually no addition to the housing stock.

The symptom of such a shortage is overcrowding—a word which did not pass the lips of the Opposition spokesman in her speech. During my period as a Member of Parliament, many people have come to my surgery to seek help about a change in social housing. Overwhelmingly, they have been people living in overcrowded accommodation who want a bigger property and seek to move out of a one or two-bedroom property. I have therefore been surprised by the general approach of Opposition Members and by some of the media in saying that no one wants to move out of small properties into big ones and that there are therefore no small properties to be moved into by those affected by the removal of the spare room subsidy.

By chance, I bumped into an old friend who is now the chairman of an organisation called HomeSwapper. Some 80% of local authorities belong to it, and hundreds of thousands of tenants have registered on it that they want to swap.

Oral Answers to Questions

Clive Efford Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Grant]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. We need to remember that gambling is a legal activity and is enjoyed safely by many people right across the country.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

The review of category B machines affects Scotland as much as any other part of the country. In answer to a question about FOBTs from my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition on 8 January, the Prime Minister said:

“We will be reporting in the spring as a result of the review that is under way, and I think it is important that we get to grips with this.”—[Official Report, 8 January 2014; Vol. 573, c. 295.]

Will the Minister confirm that we will get to grips with FOBTs in betting shops in the spring and that, most importantly, that will include a review of the £100 stake and £500 prize money maximums?

[Mrs Grant]

We have been getting to grips with that since we came to power in 2010. For the record, in 1997 there were no FOBTs, yet by 2010, when the Labour party was removed from power, there were more than 30,000. I am afraid that I will not take any lessons from the shadow Minister, as we are the ones who are gathering the evidence, pushing the industry to provide data and taking problem gambling seriously for the first time.

Jobs and Business

Clive Efford Excerpts

Friday 10th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

It is not complacent to acknowledge the extent to which we have serious problems, which is where I started, or to compare the country with economies that are suffering similar problems. For those who are rightly focused on unemployment among young people, the simple truth is that long-term youth unemployment rose by 40% in the boom years when the Labour party was in power. Labour Members are therefore not in a strong position to lecture us on how to deal with it.

We have focused on two policy areas to deal with the problem of youth unemployment. I am most closely involved in the growth of apprenticeships and my colleague, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, will talk about the other. We have all embraced apprenticeships, including, rather belatedly, the Opposition. There is a recognition among employers and young people that it is an excellent model for training. Under this Government, the number of apprenticeship starts has increased by 86%. There were 160,000 last year. There has been a 42% growth in the number of young people starting apprenticeships. We are making reforms that will improve the system further, notably the employer ownership system, under which apprenticeship training will be channelled through employers so that there is the demand for real jobs. We are also introducing a staged approach through traineeships, so that young people have a route into proper training.

A difficult area is that what has kept unemployment down in the UK is the fact that real wages have not risen. Indeed, they have fallen. That was the main focus of attack from the Leader of the Opposition. We need to understand and explain what has happened. The British economy was hit massively by the financial crisis. We are a significantly poorer country than we were before that time, although we are now recovering. The impact of that has been felt predominantly through the reduction of wages in real terms.

We are trying to mitigate that impact in two major ways. The first is by lifting low earners out of tax, which increases their disposal income even though their pre-tax income may have fallen. The effect of that is that people on the minimum wage are paying half the income tax that they paid before we embarked on that reform. We have also taken 2.7 million out of income tax altogether. Secondly, and this is my direct responsibility, we have ignored the advice from some quarters to abandon the minimum wage or to dilute it. I have followed the advice of the Low Pay Commission on the minimum wage.

One of the points that the Leader of the Opposition made in his speech—

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Vince Cable]

I will finish my point and then take the intervention.

The Leader of the Opposition pointed to the apparently low level of enforcement of the minimum wage and the limited number of prosecutions. That worried me at the time, so I checked the history. I discovered that in the last four years of the Labour Government, the number of prosecutions under this flagship policy was two a year. We have therefore maintained a rather similar practice.

I have asked for an interview with the head of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, who is responsible for prosecutions, to establish why the level is so low, because this is a perfectly legitimate issue. I have discovered that a large number of companies are being pursued under civil proceedings, where the maximum penalty is £5,000 a year. The matter is therefore being enforced assiduously, but not through the criminal system. I will establish why we are not doing that and whether we should be doing more to underpin the rights of some of the lowest-paid people in society.

[Clive Efford]

The right hon. Gentleman has anticipated the point that I was going to make, which was about the alarmingly low level of prosecutions for not paying the national minimum wage. Is most of the enforcement not taking place through trade union activity?

[Vince Cable]

I am sure that the trade unions play a part in bringing this matter to the attention of the authorities. Every complaint is investigated. Some come from the trade unions and I welcome the role that they play.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rushanara Ali]

The hon. Gentleman’s Government should apologise for their failure to reverse the increase. Child poverty in my constituency has gone up consecutively in the past three years. He ought to apologise for that and he ought to act. He should have lobbied his Government to propose measures in this Queen’s Speech to tackle child poverty. He ought to apologise and I give him the opportunity to do so today.

[Clive Efford]

I am reading the conclusion of the Institute for Fiscal Studies report into child poverty, and it states that relative child poverty is projected to be 6% higher, reversing the fall in relative poverty between 2000 and 2010-11.

[Rushanara Ali]

What can I say to my hon. Friend but, “Well said”? I wish the Minister would take these issues more seriously. Instead of tackling the substantive problem of child poverty, his colleagues in the Treasury have decided to redefine it. As with many things the Government are doing, they find it is easier to meddle with the figures and interfere with the statistics—rewrite them, even. The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is not in his place. He has just had his wrists slapped once again by the Office for National Statistics for meddling with the statistics.

The Government should rebuild trust with the British people by coming clean on these issues. They should not try to rewrite the figures, but actually do something about child poverty, an issue that is of great concern to families and to all people. Doing so would address the point, made by my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed), that the Conservative party is not just in the business of pretending to change on these substantial issues. We live in hope, although there is not much of that left.

The Government’s approach to child poverty and the response of the Minister highlight how out of touch they are. If he and his colleagues cannot understand the seriousness of falling living standards and rising levels of child poverty—to name but two issues—and what they mean for ordinary people’s lives, I cannot understand how we are to trust them to get us out of the economic mess that they have put us in over the past three years. It is their mess: they need to clean it up and they have categorically failed to do so.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Clive Efford Excerpts

Friday 22nd March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

The Secretary of State’s level of delusion is now bettering his previous level. He knows that the policy costings—which he has clearly not read—published by his right hon. Friend the Chancellor show that the housing benefit bill is not going down over the next couple of years, but going up. The Secretary of State’s efforts have been so successful that he is bringing in a policy—the hated bedroom tax—that will cost more than it saves. We saw the proof on Wednesday—housing benefit up by more than £1 billion. That is a mark of his failure.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State cannot rewrite history. This Government inherited the biggest council house building programme for 20 years. One of the first things they did was scrap it. They now have the lowest building starts since the 1920s—lower even than we had, and that is saying something.

[Mr Byrne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. What we needed in the Budget was determined action to build houses, not another subsidy for Britain’s richest citizens.

Let me start to conclude by reminding the House what most families will now experience. We heard in the Secretary of State’s speech some words about the rise in the personal allowance. The truth is that, even despite the rise in the personal allowance, the cuts buried in the Budget will mean that by April 2014-15 the same family who will see the personal allowance increase to £10,000 will be worse off. They will lose £600 a year in cuts, and my fear is that worse is to come.

The Chancellor gave away a lot of things in the first year of the next Parliament. Although we saw a little of how he will pay for it—he is going to fast-track the flat-rate pension—this is one of the great mysteries of this Budget, and we have not heard much about it yet. When the Minister winds up, I hope he will confirm at what rate the flat-rate pension will be introduced. The original White Paper set the figure at £144, which I notice is lower than £145, which is the combined total of pension credit and the state pension set out in the Budget book on Wednesday. As we know, the advance of the flat-rate pension offers the Treasury a huge national insurance windfall of about £5.5 billion in 2016-17 and 2017-18. What is interesting—we heard nothing about this—is that half of that windfall comes from public sector employers. The Library was able to tell me earlier in the week that the national health service, schools and the police will face a bill for £1.6 billion in higher national insurance contributions. We heard nothing about precisely where that money will come from. I hope the Minister will be able to set our minds at rest and say why this will not be another cut to the NHS in the next Parliament.

The second mystery surrounds the unspecified cuts of £11.5 billion in the first years of the next Parliament. We know that things such as the strivers tax and other cuts to working tax credits will deliver up to £6 billion, but where will the other £5 billion come from? Can DWP Ministers tell us how they will resist another huge great cut to welfare in the June spending review?

We got more of the same from the Chancellor on Wednesday and more of the same from the Secretary of State today. Once upon a time he liked to say that he cared about poverty. No more. One million children on his watch will be pushed into poverty. Tens of thousands of disabled people will follow. Families get less, while millionaires get more, all because this Chancellor has flatlined the economy and because the Secretary of State has asked for nothing, got nothing and delivered nothing to bring down unemployment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

I want to talk about housing, particularly in London, but before I do let me refer to the millionaires’ tax cut that will come in in April. It will benefit 13,000 individuals who earn more than £1 million and have a combined income of £27.4 billion, and I am grateful to the trade union Unison for providing me with that figure. Those 13,000 people earn £27.4 billion, and the Government somehow think that in these times that cut should be a priority for public expenditure. It is outrageous. The Government are freezing child benefit for the third year running, and the money could have been used to benefit 12 million children if child benefit had been increased in line with the consumer prices index. I wonder what the cash injection to the economy would have been if that money had been given to families who would have spent it rather than on providing a bonanza to 13,000 people. Imagine the letter from the Chancellor of the Exchequer saying, “You’ve been selected as one of 13,000 people to share in a £1.2725 billion payout from Her Majesty’s Exchequer and all you have to do to qualify is confirm in writing that you earned more than £1 million this year.” What an absolute disgrace.

I look back on the criticisms of our benefit changes when we were in government, and on the fact that the Liberal Democrats were constantly carping, saying how mean we were, and attacking us about benefit changes and rules for people with disabilities—but now they sit there, and that tax cut is their priority. At a time like this, when the bedroom tax is being introduced, when wages are being frozen and when unemployment is going up, as we have heard, this Government’s priority is a tax cut for millionaires. I find that absolutely shocking.

Some elements of the Budget are welcome: any assistance for people who want to buy their homes, particularly those who might have to wait many years to save a deposit, is always welcome. However, I am concerned about the impact of the Government’s planned assistance in the absence of a significant improvement in the supply of housing. I know they will say that they are planning to supply housing and that they have a house building programme, but we have been hearing those honeyed words since they came into office in 2010. In London we have seen a slump in house building and we now have the lowest level of starts since the 1920s. The Secretary of State has attacked the Labour Government and made a great deal of saying that they built too few homes—they did, and they certainly built too few socially rented homes—but this Government are going even further.

For instance, in London most of the homes built under the current Mayor were started under Ken Livingstone. The current Mayor is claiming credit for homes although the plans were started under Ken Livingstone. According to the Evening Standard—I think we can rely on the Evening Standard because, as we all know, it was heavily briefed on the Budget on Wednesday—there have been only 3,332 starts for affordable homes in the past year, and only 1,357 have been completed. That is fuelling enormous problems in London, not just for people who need rented homes but for people who want to save to buy homes.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Is my hon. Friend aware that “affordable”, as used by the Mayor’s office, is a complete misnomer? In many places where so-called affordable homes are being built, they are affordable only for people earning well over £50,000 a year and are of no help whatsoever to the average Londoner.

[Clive Efford]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right.

I want to discuss the impact of the purchasing power of overseas money on house prices in London. That not only has an impact on house prices but has a knock-on impact on land values that makes it virtually impossible to build affordable housing, particularly in large parts of central London.

The Smith Institute published a report last year called “London for Sale”, which stated:

“Anyone doubting the scale and potential impact of overseas investment in London should note that at £5.2 billion in 2011 it was a larger sum than the whole Government investment in the Affordable Housing Programme for England for four years…Two years of overseas housing investment in London would total more than the public sector funding package (£9.3 billion) for the 2012 Olympic Games.”

That is the scale of the money coming from overseas into our housing market. Savills, one of the property market agents, says that London is a prime property market that

“will rise 22.7% during the period 2012-16.”

Its comparable forecast for the mainstream market across the UK is 6%, less than the rate of inflation. What we are seeing is the huge impact of overseas money on the price of housing in London. The Government intend to compete with that money by providing assistance with mortgages. I have no objection at all to anyone being given such assistance, but if—and this argument was made on the “Today” programme the other day—12 people go for 10 houses, that is likely to drive up prices. If the Government’s incentive to provide additional help to people to put down deposits means that 15 people go for houses, but there are still only 10 houses being supplied, prices will be driven up.

The Social Market Foundation has commented on what the Government plan to do, and it says that it helps only older home buyers:

“Overall, the scheme will entice young people to load themselves up with debt to finance overpriced houses”.

The SMF goes on to say that if prices fall those people will be in a trap, and they will pay twice: they will pay for the overpriced house, but they will also have to pay increased taxes to pay back the money that the Government have put into the scheme.

I have only a minute left, but I want to tell the Government that they must make it clear that they are going to build affordable houses. I return to the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) made. When we talk about affordable houses, we must make them affordable for people on the median income for London. It must not be affordable rent calculated according to a percentage that takes into account land values in places such as Kensington and Chelsea. We must remove those land values and make sure that we build houses that are affordable, not just so that people can live in those parts of London and fill the essential jobs in the economy at the lower end of the pay scale but so that they can become savers for the future. Unless we create that capacity in the rental market so that people can live in houses that they can afford to rent and, at the same time, afford to save, we will not have a sustainable private housing market or houses for sale in future.