PIP Changes: Impact on Carer’s Allowance

Danny Kruger Excerpts

Thursday 27th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Danny Kruger (East Wiltshire) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Torbay (Steve Darling) on bringing this important matter before the House. In government, my party supported carers: we increased carer’s allowance by £1,500 and, with the support of the Liberal Democrats, introduced carer’s leave. We are united again today in dismay at what this Government are doing.

The Government had 14 years to prepare their welfare reforms. We had nothing for eight months, and then everything in a rush, because the Chancellor crashed the economy. With growth this year cut in half, inflation rising further, unemployment up, productivity down, debt interest soaring, a record tax burden and 200,000 people being pushed into absolute poverty by the measures taken by this Government, they have had an emergency Budget containing cuts to benefits for disabled people. Perhaps if they were not in such a rush, they would have realised that these crude reforms also impact carers. Some 150,000 people who gave up income to look after a loved one, and who rely on carer’s allowance to make ends meet, are now going to lose it.

The Government are balancing the books on the backs of the people least able to take the weight. That is Labour: making other people pay for the fiasco of their Budget. First they came for the farmers, then for the pensioners, and now it is the carers—the most important people in our society, doing the most important job a human being can do, not for the money but for the love. The least the Government can do is to give them our support. That is what we did in government, so why will they not?

Can the Minister confirm whether carer’s allowance was a deliberate target of the Government’s reforms, or did they not realise the impact of what they were doing to PIP because of the rush they were in? Do they think that taking £500 million from carers while giving above-inflation pay awards to the trade unions is the right priority, and does the Minister share the Chief Secretary to the Treasury’s view that cutting support for carers and disabled people is like taking pocket money from children? Is that what he believes carer’s allowance is—pocket money?

[Sir Stephen Timms]

I suppose the hon. Gentleman has no choice but to attempt to defend his party’s record in government. As I have referred to already, the Conservative party’s plan was to convert PIP into vouchers—that really frightened people who were dependent on that system—and they also wanted to make some big cuts to the work capability assessment, which were ruled out by the courts as unlawful. We announced in the Green Paper that we are going to abandon those cuts. For example, the Conservatives were proposing to remove the mobility descriptor from the work capability assessment on the grounds that people can now work from home, but it is clearly ludicrous to claim that a mobility impairment does not affect a person’s ability to work. I remind the hon. Gentleman that in responding to the Green Paper on behalf of the Opposition, his hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately) demanded further cuts, so the outrage he has expressed is a bit inappropriate.

We have a proper plan, set out in the Green Paper. It has been well thought through—as the hon. Gentleman will find if he reads it properly—including a reference to unpaid carers on its very last page. We are well aware of the impact it will have, which is why we are consulting on the transitional arrangements.

Oral Answers to Questions

Danny Kruger Excerpts

Monday 17th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Danny Kruger (East Wiltshire) (Con)]

When the Government scrapped universal entitlement to the winter fuel payment, they said that all 880,000 people eligible for it would get it through pension credit. We now know that that did not happen; they have got fewer than 120,000 new pensioners enrolled. More than three quarters of a million of the poorest pensioners have missed out on vital support this winter, so will the Minister tell us whether that was the plan all along—to save money at the expense of the poorest pensioners—or will he admit that he has completely failed in his duty towards the poorest elderly people in our society?

[Torsten Bell]

The lesson I have learned is from the last Government, who put up pensioner poverty year after year—it increased by 300,000 over the course of the last Government. This Government have run a pension credit take-up campaign that has seen an 81% increase in applications since July compared with the same period last year, and 46,000 more awards compared with that period. That is what a Government doing their job looks like.

[Danny Kruger]

That is 45,000 more awards than in the same period last year, but 880,000 people are eligible—that is a pathetic achievement, and the Government have spent millions of pounds on advertising this. We still have thousands of people waiting for their winter fuel payment, and the winter is over, so it is a little late for the Government’s next advertising plan. The fact is that we still do not know who has missed out, what the waiting time for those payments was, and what the effects have been on pensioner poverty or on hospital admissions, which have increased significantly for pensioners. Given the scandalous failure of their pension credit campaign, will the Government release all available data on the impact of the winter fuel payment cut?

[Torsten Bell]

We have already released significant data on that and, as I say, data was released just weeks ago showing the unparalleled success of the campaign to drive up pension credit take-up. Now we are concentrating on increasing support for pensioners right across the board, because the biggest disgrace of the last Government was where they left the health service that our older generations rely on. We are turning that around, day after day.

Women’s Changed State Pension Age: Compensation

Danny Kruger Excerpts

Monday 17th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Danny Kruger (East Wiltshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank the hon. Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage), my Wiltshire near-neighbour, for her powerful speech representing the many thousands of people who supported the petition.

I pay tribute to our visitors in the Public Gallery, many of whom I detect might qualify as WASPI women. I echo the point made by the hon. Member for Torbay (Steve Darling) about the power of this campaign, which demonstrates what people power can do to get the attention of Parliament. I hope they feel that this debate has advanced their cause—we will hear from the Minister shortly about whether that has happened.

I also pay tribute to hon. Members across the Chamber for their speeches. I agree with those of them who pointed out the cross-party nature of our efforts. It has been very powerful to see, in particular, the friendship between the hon. Member for Salford (Rebecca Long Bailey) and my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), which is a moving sight. They are the conscience and soul of their respective parties, and I hope that the Minister will listen to his hon. Friend just as I listen to my right hon. Friend.

I recognise that the question is a complex one and the Government have had a difficult time in thinking about what to do. It is true, as the ombudsman’s report pointed out, that there was no direct loss of income to women from the maladministration. However, it is also true that the bad communication of the policy change led directly to people’s income being impacted negatively and to their making decisions in the absence of full information from Government about their future income, as many hon. Members have powerfully expressed on behalf of individual constituents.

It is also true that the question of how to communicate with individual members of the public is a fraught one, but it is simply not credible to say that the communications with this group were adequate. As the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim (Jim Allister) powerfully pointed out, if the Government also say that there is very little point in sending letters because people do not open them, then what is the point in the Government communicating with the public in that way on any topic?

It is also true—this is the final defence of the Government, as it were—that dealing with 3.5 million people, all of whom have difference circumstances, is a complex matter. I recognise how difficult that is, and how enormous the potential bill for the taxpayer could have been if every single one of those women received the maximum compensation.

I have said that this issue is very complicated, but it is also fundamentally very simple. Other hon. Members have made this point more powerfully than I can, but the fact is that Labour MPs campaigned to fix this problem, right the wrongs that had been done to the WASPI women and, if they won the election, see justice done. That has not happened. As hon. Members have said very powerfully, our democracy depends on us MPs fulfilling the promises that we make when we stand for election. If we do not do that, we will have a bigger problem than the injustice done to the WASPI women; indeed, our whole democracy will be in crisis.

I recognise that more could have been done by the last Conservative Government before the election. However, we were waiting for the ombudsman’s report and the suggestion that we kicked it into the long grass is a little unfair. The fact is that the ombudsman’s report arrived a matter of weeks before the general election was called. I am confident—my party made clear pledges to this effect—that we would have fulfilled our commitment to the WASPI women in light of the ombudsman’s report. Exactly what we would have done, I cannot say. Sadly, no one will ever know because the public took a different view about who should take the matter forward. Nevertheless, I can say with absolute candour and confidence that we would have done more than nothing, which is what the Labour Government have done.

Leaving party politics out of it, I echo the point made by the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine), who said that this is a matter for Parliament. The report came from a parliamentary ombudsman and it is Parliament that decides on these matters. Like her, I take hope in the many excellent, powerful and brave speeches made by Labour Members here in Westminster Hall today, and by many other Members who have stood in public and pledged their opposition to the decision made by their own party leadership. I honour them for the commitment they are making to honour the pledges they made when they stood as candidates, and I very much hope that the Minister is listening to them.

[Jim Shannon]

I have been a Back Bencher all my parliamentary career; I have no wish to be anything other than a Back Bencher. I am very happy in the role that I play. The Government Back Benchers in Westminster Hall today are playing an absolutely magnificent role; they should be congratulated and they should be very proud of the stance they are taking. Every one of them has spoken in support of the WASPI women and we thank them for that—and more Members than those Back Benchers are committed to doing the same. I look to the Minister here today. I have seen him nodding in support of them; his head went up and down, so I think he was agreeing with what they were saying. If that is the case, does he agree that he can only do one thing—meet the WASPI women before the judicial review makes him do something that he may end up deciding he should have done long ago?

[Danny Kruger]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who is without a doubt the greatest Back Bencher in the House of Commons, and I very much agree with what he is saying. I reiterate my appreciation of and respect for colleagues across the House and particularly those Labour Members who have spoken today and in other places in support of the WASPI women.

Let me finish by putting a specific question to the Minister. When we were here in Westminster Hall a couple of months ago to debate this issue, it was his first day in the job. By the way, we should not be blaming him for coming up with this policy; he was a Back Bencher when it was conceived and he just had to come out and defend it, which he did. On that day, during the last debate on this topic, he said:

“We will work with the ombudsman to develop a detailed action plan identifying and addressing lessons from this and other PHSO investigations.” —[Official Report, 15 January 2025; Vol. 760, c. 157WH.]

I would be grateful if he told us what progress has been made on this matter and what action plan we can expect. What update can he provide? As the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) just said, I very much hope that he will work closely with the WASPI women themselves and their representatives to develop that action plan.

This battle is not over; as we have just heard, there is a case in the High Court about it. However, Parliament remains powerful enough, and has the authority and the ability, to right the injustice that has been done over so many years to these women. I very much hope that the Minister—who, as I say, cannot be blamed for conceiving of this policy—having heard the powerful speeches from parties across the House and being aware of the strength of feeling in our constituencies, will feed back to his colleagues in the Government that a mistake has been made and that the opportunity still remains to right this injustice.

Social Security Benefits

Danny Kruger Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Danny Kruger (East Wiltshire) (Con)]

Let me state at the outset that the Opposition support the measures to uprate pensions in line with earnings and benefits in line with inflation. I am honoured, personally, to take part in this important annual ritual, which is never well attended but is always a high-quality debate. The traditional star of this debate is, of course, the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms), who this year has descended from the clouds of the Work and Pensions Committee to the sweaty arena of ministerial office. No one is more qualified than he to take the office that he now has. No one has more genuine expertise and compassion for the people that we all want to support than he, so I am very pleased that he is in this role. I just note in passing how much the House misses the expertise of departed Members. Paul Maynard, David Linden and Nigel Mills all used to take part in this debate to great value. I welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans), who is taking up his position as a new star of this annual debate.

Despite the formality, it is an important debate, because it is an opportunity for us to take stock of the welfare and pensions system as a whole. As pensions and the triple lock were mentioned, I am happy to provide some clarification for the right hon. Gentleman. I think he has misunderstood, or our leader’s position has been misquoted, because we are not looking at cancelling the triple lock. It is his colleague, the new Pensions Minister, who has been very clearly quoted saying that the triple lock is a silly system and indefensible. I look forward to further clarification from Government Members.

[Dan Tomlinson]

As I understand it, the shadow Chancellor said that the triple lock is unsustainable. Do you agree with him on that point?

[Danny Kruger]

Clearly, there are questions about the long-term sustainability of our pensions system and our national insurance fund, but I think the shadow Chancellor was talking about the very long term, rather than the immediate situation that we are in. There is no intention, on the Conservative Benches anyway, to review the triple lock at this stage.

[Sir Stephen Timms]

To clarify the position further, what happened was that the leader of the hon. Gentleman’s party was asked on LBC whether she would look at the triple lock, and her reply was,

“we’re going to look at means testing. Means testing is something which we don’t do properly here.”

What did she mean by that?

[Danny Kruger]

My right hon. Friend replied, “No”, to the interviewer. We are not looking at means-testing the triple lock. She was talking more generally about the challenge of means-testing in our social security system, which is a legitimate question for us all to consider, as I shall go on to discuss.

I did not want to get too partisan in this debate, but—[Interruption.] Here we go! No, I won’t, genuinely, because the challenge of our welfare system is a shared problem that we face across the House. I will note in passing that our party’s record on welfare is a good one. We introduced universal credit, rationalising the spaghetti web of benefits that we inherited from the right hon. Gentleman when he was last in office. We made work pay and helped people off welfare and into work, and we succeeded in that, with 4 million more people in employment in 2024 than in 2010.

Let me point out that we had another mess to sort out in the public finances. When we took office, the Government were running a deficit of 9% and the Treasury was spending way more than it was earning. By the time the pandemic struck, the deficit was down to less than 1%. We were living within our means and were able to afford the generous uplifts made to benefits and pensions in the last Parliament, as well as the huge package of support that we provided during the pandemic.

I want to be fair and admit that, as the Minister suggested, the welfare system is not working properly at the moment. Too many people are being consigned to a life of inactivity and dependency, especially via the categories of sickness benefit. It is bad for those people, their communities and the country as a whole, including the taxpayer, who spends £65 billion a year on incapacity and disability benefits, rising to £100 billion a year unless reforms are made by the end of this Parliament.

So what is going on? Those terrible figures reflect the fact that we have bad rates of physical ill health, including obesity and, as is strongly evidenced in the statistics, bad backs because we simply do not move around enough in the day. The figures also reflect a rise in mental ill health, which we see in alarming rates in schools and among young people. We have to do more on those issues through all sorts of interventions that lie more with the Department for Education and the Department of Health and Social Care than with the Department for Work and Pensions. However, as the Lords Economic Affairs Committee reported last week, the rise in welfare claims cannot be attributed to worsening health or longer NHS waiting lists; the problem is growing far faster than that.

Perhaps the problem is low wages that do not attract people into employment, and that is certainly a reality. Low wages have driven demand for the immigration that we have seen get so out of control in recent years. Profound changes are under way in the world of work, away from secure employment towards a more precarious jobs market. Labour is destroying jobs, taxing employment and discouraging new hires with its new Employment Rights Bill. However, the fact is that wages have risen sharply above inflation in recent years, which is why pensions are going up by earnings this year. Employers are offering good wages but are not filling vacancies.

The issue is not health, although we have problems in health; the issue is not work, although we have big problems there—the issue is welfare. People are not being incentivised to take jobs because the offer from the welfare system is better. When I say welfare, I do not mean unemployment support. Thanks to universal credit and the last Government’s reforms, we saw record numbers of people move off unemployment benefit and into work. That is because we offered support to people to find work and imposed strict conditions that meant people had to actively look for a job. If they did not, they lost the benefit. That worked for a lot of people, but we found—here is the issue—that for a lot of other people, the incentives made them go the other way, further away from work into the sickness category, because that is where the good money is. In some cases, the money is double what they can get on unemployment benefit, and sometimes £3,000 more than the minimum wage. People almost certainly get it because the approval rates are high at over 90% for the limited capacity for work category.

This is big and unconditional money. There is no expectation to do anything about the health conditions that mean someone is signed off sick. There is no expectation of being reassessed any time soon or, indeed, ever. That is the challenge, and I hope the Government will rise to it in the same way that we rose to the crisis in unemployment benefit in the last decade.

[Dr Luke Evans (Hinckley and Bosworth) (Con)]

One of the ways the last Government helped to deal with this issue was by dealing with the taper. It was at 63% and it went down to 55%, so people who were working got more of their own money back. Does my hon. Friend believe that this is one way we could incentivise people to step back into the workplace—by having more of their money as they earn it?

[Danny Kruger]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That was a key part of the reforms brought in towards the last part of the last decade, enabled by universal credit—a much simpler system. I am glad to say that we managed to reduce that taper significantly and to incentivise work.

[Dan Tomlinson]

Madam Deputy Speaker, I will try not to say “you” this time—I am sorry.

I would be genuinely interested to know what the Opposition’s position is on reform of the incapacity benefit system. It is a knotty problem. I know that when Opposition Members were in government, it was considered, but I am not clear what their position is at the moment. I know the Government are coming forward with proposals soon, so I would be genuinely interested to hear.

[Danny Kruger]

I am grateful for the opportunity. We had a whole series of plans that were sadly interrupted by the general election result, and I will come on in a moment to some of the suggestions I have for where the Government might go.

[Steve Darling (Torbay) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman was talking about incentivising people into work. In my surgeries in Torbay, I find that an awful lot of people are off sick with hip problems or mental health challenges, and the challenge people have in getting back into work is the broken health system that was left by the previous Conservative Government. I hope the new Government will drive harder on fixing the system, because many people on benefits are keen to get back into work; they are just unfit for work.

[Danny Kruger]

The hon. Gentleman reflects the experience that many of us have had in our surgeries. Nevertheless, I do not think that health reform on its own will do the job. As I mentioned, the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee has looked into the matter and reported last week, pointing out that the increase in welfare claims cannot be attributed to longer waiting lists or, indeed, to worsening health conditions. The welfare problem is outstripping the problems we see in the nation’s health, so we have to do more in the DWP. We wait with bated breath to see some movement on that front.

In fact, it was in this debate last year when we were uprating benefits that the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Alison McGovern), now a ministerial colleague of the right hon. Member for East Ham, said that, “Labour has a plan”. That was a year ago. Seven months ago, Labour won the election. She did not say that the plan was oven-ready, but she implied it. I know the Minister says that the delay is because of a court case that happened two weeks ago, but I do not quite understand how that explains the delay that has been going on for seven months.

Here we are approving a measure that will increase expenditure by nearly £7 billion, as the right hon. Gentleman said, and we have no idea how the bill will be brought down over time. But after much head scratching in the DWP—and, we are told, people pulling their hair out in No. 10—we are getting closer to the big reveal. We hear exciting hints in the media that the Government might scrap the limited capacity for work category altogether, scrap the work capability assessment, merge employment and support allowance into the personal independence payment system, or require people on sickness benefits to engage with work coaches. I am encouraged by all that pitch-rolling.

If the Government are softening up their Back Benchers for serious reform, I applaud them for it, but I will believe it when I see it, because Labour opposed every step towards tougher conditions, more assessments and more incentives to work. They opposed reforms that we were introducing to the fit note system. In fact, I see from a written answer to a question in the other place that the Government say they have no plans to reform the fit note system, which I regret. I wonder whether the Minister could help clarify if that is the case.

On universal credit, it appears that the sinner repenteth, or sort of repenteth. The Government are on some kind of journey. In the last Parliament, they said they would scrap universal credit, then they said they would replace it, and now, as we have heard, they are reviewing it. I am glad to hear that, although the right hon. Gentleman just said that they are reviewing it over the course of this year, so that seems to be unrelated to the Green Paper process, which we are expecting in the spring. I would like to understand how those two processes are aligned.

Rather than scrapping, replacing or reviewing universal credit, I invite the Government simply to use it. It is a flexible system, as we saw during the pandemic, and it works; it just needs to be adapted to the new challenge. In conclusion, let me make a few suggestions for the right hon. Gentleman to consider as he prepares his Green Paper and his universal credit review.

The back to work plan that we announced before the general election would have got 1.1 million people into work, using more support and tougher conditions—“more support” meaning more of the WorkWell pilots that my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately) introduced. I was glad to hear the Secretary of State praising those pilots yesterday, although sadly without attribution. In our view, the work capability assessment should be face to face, and it should be asset-based, not deficit-based; it should be asking what a claimant can do, not what they cannot do. The claimant should begin the journey of recovery—the journey back towards work—then and there. Rather than budgeting for ever higher welfare, as we are doing today, we should be investing in a universal support system to run alongside universal credit.

We also need tougher conditions. We simply cannot have people with a bad back or anxiety being signed off sick for the rest of their lives; they need to know that we believe in them, and that believing in them means having high expectations of them. In exchange for benefits paid for by working people, claimants should take active steps, when they can, to address their physical and mental health needs, and they should work meaningfully on their own health and wellbeing. That will not look the same for everyone and it must not be a tick-box exercise. That is why we need the help of civil society, not just coaches and therapists, providing the human touch and the range of help and opportunities that people need.

Most of all, we need a clear message to go out from the Government that unless a person is so severely disabled or ill that they genuinely can never work at all, they will not have a life on benefits. That clear message, enacted through reform that the right hon. Gentleman’s Department must bring forward urgently, is the only way to get our exorbitant welfare bills under control, and to get our workforce and our economy moving again.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

I will start by commenting on the contribution made by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for East Wiltshire (Danny Kruger). First, it is really important that in this place we use evidence, to help ensure that we have effective, evidence-based policy. When we are using policy-based evidence, that is quite dangerous. I am referring to his remarks about conditionality. I refer him to the evidence, such as the two-year study undertaken by the University of York, which showed that there was no evidence to support tough sanctions. People have lost their lives because of sanctions, and that study showed that there was no evidence to support stopping somebody’s social security support—their money that they use to live—for up to two years, because that was the period that the Government of the day said benefits could be stopped for. That has real-life consequences.

I can also refer the shadow Minister to his own Cabinet Office reports, which showed that sanctions were not effective in getting people into work. We all need to be very responsible in what we say.

[Danny Kruger]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Debbie Abrahams]

No, I am sorry but I am not going to give way.

As a former public health consultant, I can also say that the key drivers of ill health are socioeconomic determinants. There is so much evidence for that, going back decades, and I wonder why Conservative Members are not familiar with it—whether it is just not palatable to them, or it is inconvenient. Much more recently, the covid inquiry that we debated a couple of weeks ago showed very clearly that one of the reasons why we had such a poor experience, both in terms of morbidity and mortality—more than any other country in Europe—was our ill health. It does a real disservice to the people who have lost their lives or are enduring long covid at the moment, to their families and their memories, to suggest that it is something else, let alone to the people who are—

[Danny Kruger]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Debbie Abrahams]

No, I am not going to give way. [Interruption.] I am not going to give way.

I welcome the social security order and, in particular, what my right hon. Friend the Minister has said about it. It was an absolute pleasure to serve on the Select Committee when he was its Chair, and in this respect I agree with the shadow Minister: my right hon. Friend’s transfer from the Select Committee to his ministerial position is very welcome. We all appreciate his gravitas and experience, but also his common decency in the role.

I want to talk about the context of this uprating order and the importance of our social security system in providing, at the very least, a safety net for people when they need it, and from cradle to grave, like the NHS. Unfortunately, though, over the past 14 to 15 years, the adequacy of support for people on low incomes has been dramatically eroded, particularly for people of working age—again, contrary to what the shadow Minister has said. Between 2010 and 2012, the uprating was about 1.5%; between 2012 and 2016, it was 1%; and between 2016 and 2020, it was zero. The average annual consumer prices index increase for each of those years was about 3%.

There has been a steady and consistent erosion in the value of social security support, which has affected the value of universal credit, jobseeker’s allowance, employment and support allowance, income support, housing benefit, child tax credit, working tax credit and child benefit. The Resolution Foundation has estimated that this erosion was equivalent to a cut of £20 billion a year from social security support for working-age people. That is clearly not well understood by the Conservative party.

Something else that is not well understood is that these are predominantly people in low-paid work. The vast majority of people in receipt of working-age social security support are, or have been, working people—that is something for us all to consider. Only a tiny proportion of DWP spending is spent on jobseeker’s allowance, for example—it is 0.001% of the current budget. As is evidenced in the Work and Pensions Committee’s report from last year, which I invite shadow Ministers to read, out-of-work support is at the lowest level in real terms since 1912. This is not a generous system; according to OECD comparisons, we are not supporting people in the way that a civilised society as well off as we are should do.

The consequences of inadequate social security are clear. Last week’s Joseph Rowntree Foundation poverty report made for bleak reading—again, I invite people to read it. Over one in five people in the UK are in poverty; that is 21%, or 14.3 million people. Of those, 8.1 million are working-age adults. Some 4.3 million children are in poverty—three in 10 among the population as a whole, while in my constituency the figure is one in two—and 1.9 million of those in poverty are pensioners.

Disabled people are at greater risk of poverty, partly by virtue of the additional costs that they face due to their disability and ill health, and partly due to the barriers to work that disabled people face. Disability employment has flatlined; when it comes to being in work, the gap between people who are not disabled and those who are has been about 30% for the past 14 years or so. It went down by about 1%. Some 16 million people in the UK are disabled—nearly one in four—and almost four in 10 families have at least one person who is disabled. The poverty rate for disabled people, which is 30%, is 10 percentage points higher than it is for non-disabled people. The rate is even higher—50%—for those living with a long-term, limiting mental health condition, compared with 29% for people with a physical disability or another type of disability.

Other groups of people are also disproportionately more likely to live in poverty, including former carers, people from ethnic minority communities and lone parents, but given the media speculation there has been about the future of disability support, I want to focus on that. Last year’s Select Committee report on benefit levels set out a wide range of evidence suggesting that benefit levels are too low and that claimants are often unable to afford daily living costs and extra costs associated with having a health condition or disability. Although the Select Committee supports the Government’s ambition to get Britain working and a social security system that supports work, these ambitions are not achievable within a few months. Meanwhile, people are barely clinging on.

The DWP does not have an expressed objective for how it will support claimants with daily essential living costs. In the Select Committee’s report we recommended building a cross-party consensus to take this forward, and for the Government to outline and benchmark objectives linked to living costs to measure the effectiveness of benefit levels, and to make changes alongside annual uprating. I would welcome my right hon. Friend the Minister revisiting this Select Committee report, particularly our recommendations.

I would like to set out the consequences of our currently inadequate social security system. From peer-reviewed articles, we know that for every 1% increase in child poverty, six babies per 100,000 live births fail to reach their first birthday. That is the consequence of living in poverty for children. The hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans), because of his medical training, will know much of this, but a rewiring of the brain of children living in poverty affects them for the rest of their lives.

In another peer-reviewed piece published in 2016 in a BMJ journal, entitled “First, do no harm”, a metadata analysis of the impacts of the changes to and reassessment of the work capability assessment between 2010 and 2013 in 149 local authority areas in England found that, for each additional 10,000 people who were reassessed, there were an additional six suicides, 2,700 additional cases of mental health problems and over 7,000 more antidepressant scripts. This is evidence.

Many Members will know of my previous campaigns, and I want to refer to the deaths we have seen of social security claimants whose benefits have been stopped. I mention again Errol Graham, a 52-year-old Nottingham man with a severe mental health condition, who basically starved to death after his social security support was stopped. There are so many others I could mention, and I pay tribute to the families who have campaigned on their behalf for justice, because it is quite horrific.

Talking about people surviving our social security system, there is the case of TP—I will use his initials—also a 52-year-old man, who had worked all his life. He was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma and, sadly, his diagnosis was terminal. He was trying to be migrated from his particular incapacity support to universal credit, and he lost all his disability premiums. He was one of the litigants in a case about transitional protections when migrating from ESA and disability premiums to universal credit. This is an example of somebody who has worked all their life, and four out of five disabilities and health conditions are acquired—it could happen to any one of us, and I would just like us to consider that.

In another case, AB was born with congenital cerebral palsy and worked for 25 years, but then could not go on. If I read out the whole story, we would all be in tears, because it is just heartrending, describing the indignity of having to rely on such low-level support.

I will leave it there, but I know my right hon. Friend the Minister takes this very seriously, and I hope all of us here will work towards making the social security system more adequate for those people.

Oral Answers to Questions

Danny Kruger Excerpts

Monday 3rd February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Danny Kruger (East Wiltshire) (Con)]

The media report that people in No. 10 are tearing their hair out in frustration at the DWP taking so long to come up with welfare reforms. We have already been waiting seven months, and now we are told it will be March before there is a Green Paper, and presumably there will be no actual legislation until the end of the year at the earliest—they will be totally bald in No. 10 by then! Given the constant rise in the welfare bill, what is the financial cost so far of Labour’s inactivity?

[Sir Stephen Timms]

The inactivity bequeathed to us by the previous Government had a huge cost. The shadow Minister may not have noticed that, the week before last, a judicial review was lost on the previous Government’s handling of the work capability assessment changes. The judge found that the consultation was, frankly, dishonest—it did not tell people what the changes entailed—and was too rushed. People did not have a chance to give their views.

We will do this exercise properly. This spring, in the Green Paper, we will set out the full details of what we propose, and there will be a very full consultation so that everyone has a chance to have their say.

[Danny Kruger]

The answer to my question is £1.8 billion. That is the cost of Labour’s economic inactivity and its failure to reform welfare since the election. The sum is the same as the saving from cutting the winter fuel payment plus the income from taxing family farms. In opposition, Labour opposed imposing conditions on people claiming incapacity benefits. Does the Minister still rule that out, or will the Green Paper face reality and require people to take action, where they can, to address the health needs that mean they are signed off work?

[Sir Stephen Timms]

The Green Paper will face reality square on. It will set out a very full set of clear policies, it will be frank about what they entail and we will listen to people’s views in response. The money that the hon. Gentleman refers to as having been forgone, will probably have been forgone as a result of the judicial review the week before last, which was because of the previous Government’s failures in consultation.

Women’s Changed State Pension Age: Compensation

Danny Kruger Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Danny Kruger (East Wiltshire) (Con)]

Thank you, Dr Murrison; it is a pleasure and an honour to serve under my constituency neighbour on, I think, your first day in the Chair. I congratulate all Members who have spoken powerfully and eloquently on behalf of their constituents. I also pay tribute to the those in the campaign, many of whom are in the Public Gallery, silent witnesses to our debate—I honour them for their long campaign for justice.

In particular, I congratulate the new Minister, who I am glad to welcome to his place. Today is his first outing as a Minister, and he has quite a job to do to answer this debate. He is, of course, familiar to us from the media as an independent expert, offering ostensibly impartial advice helpful to the Labour party over many years; I am glad to see him in his rightful place at last. I exonerate him, as a new Minister, for this decision: he did not make it, but has been thrown into it by his party and his boss, the Secretary of State. Perhaps he can change the policy, now that he is new to the role and not implicated in it. Perhaps it was a condition of his accepting office that the Government revisit this topic. I very much hope that that is what we will hear from him shortly.

Particular congratulations, likewise, to my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes). I honour his long campaign on behalf of women born in the 1950s. It is not only because he loves everything from the 1950s that he is taking this position; he is absolutely right in everything that he said.

The complexity of the matter has been well addressed by the ombudsman and by the Members who spoke today, so I will not revisit the issue in any detail; it reflects the work of a series of Governments over 30 years since the 1995 decision to equalise the retirement age. I was glad to see in the ombudsman’s report that the DWP has co-operated fully with his inquiry and I am glad that Ministers and officials respected the ombudsman process.

I am sure this point was made by the Secretary of State in the main Chamber when the decision was announced, but the suggestion that this matter could have been cleared up by the previous Government in consequence of the ombudsman’s report is, I think, a little unfair, given that the report came out only two months before the general election was called. It has taken five months for this Government to make their decision—these things are complex. I respect the challenge that the Government have had. I wish we had had time to address it ourselves, but the voters would not have it. This, of course, is this Government’s decision.

To address the central issue, the ombudsman found that adequate communications were made throughout the period, but that there was a particular maladministration, as Members have repeatedly mentioned: the delay in sending out letters in 2005 to 2007. It is good that the Secretary of State acknowledged that maladministration in her response to the ombudsman—I appreciate that and accept it—and that she apologised on behalf of the then Labour Government and the DWP. The fact is, however, while no direct financial loss may have been caused by the maladministration of communication, with a direct change to people’s incomes, nevertheless, as we have heard so eloquently from Members, the maladministration—the failure to communicate properly—has caused women to make decisions in ignorance of their true circumstances.

[Robin Swann (South Antrim) (UUP)]

Is the hon. Gentleman surprised that the parliamentary ombudsman issued another report this morning damning the Department for Work and Pensions, which she criticised for

“failing to learn from its mistakes”?

She revealed yet another case, of a pensioner who was not told for eight years about a change to their pension that would leave them £3,000 a year worse off.

[Danny Kruger]

The hon. Gentleman highlights the central point here: although, as Members have said, the change of policy itself was not the subject of the ombudsman’s inquiry, the failure to communicate directly impacted the circumstances of many women. They did not understand the circumstances they would be in, and it changed the decisions they were making.

[Jim Shannon]

Does the shadow Minister share with me, and I believe with many in this Chamber, what the good book refers to as righteous anger? There is righteous anger today for those elderly people and women who looked towards their retirement as the end of pain and exhaustion. They were unable to plan financially to enable them to retire earlier due to the nature of the communication they were given by Government. Righteous anger deserves justice. Does he agree that the ladies who I and others in this Chamber represent deserve justice? Whether the Minister is responsible or not, he has to give a justifiable yes to what they want.

[Danny Kruger]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I have heard it said that anger is love in the presence of injustice. The righteous anger that so many people feel here in this Chamber and beyond reflects the essential injustice we have seen.

The Government, in their response to the report, made this central defence, which we might hear again from the Minister: they dispute that women were left out of pocket because of the failure of communication made by DWP all those years ago. The Secretary of State argued in the Commons that letters do not have much impact anyway, citing some research suggesting that people ignore letters, do not read them or do not remember receiving them. It begs the question of why Government communicate at all if there is no value to it. It is obviously true that communication of an issue raises awareness of the issue. The failure to communicate meant that awareness of the issue was not possible for these people.

I recognise the challenge faced by the Government here. It is, of course, difficult to assess the precise circumstances of 3.5 million women. I recognise that some of the claims made on behalf of the campaign were exorbitant. Nevertheless, there were many options on the table for the Government to consider, from a hardship fund to smaller packages of support. It was not the only option to give a total no—nothing at all for the WASPI women. That was not the only option.

[Melanie Onn]

Exactly what is the Conservative policy on WASPI women? I have been a long-standing campaigner for WASPI women, voting for the SNP motion in 2016, which the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) failed to attend. It is unclear exactly what the shadow Minister is suggesting. Is he suggesting that there is no plan from the Conservatives for what they would do?

[Danny Kruger]

We do believe there should be justice for the WASPI women. We do believe that an injustice was done and that there should be support offered to them. There needs to be a proper cross-party agreement on this, and I look forward to hearing what the Government have to say on it. We were examining the report ourselves when we were sadly removed from office, when the hon. Lady returned to the House, and I am sure that my party would have come forward with a much better package of support than the Government have—because that would not be difficult, would it?

[Johanna Baxter (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman made an interesting point about individuals having the information to plan for their future. Could he therefore comment on why, under 14 years of his party’s control of the Department for Work and Pensions, one of the major platforms of its work, the pensions dashboard programme, had to be reset? The costs associated with it increased 23% because it basically went off the rails under his Government’s leadership.

[Danny Kruger]

Well, I am afraid to say that often there is maladministration in benefits and welfare, which is the consequence of this vast system that we have. I apologise on behalf of the previous Government if mistakes were made. However, the point is that under the previous Government significant increases were made in both pensions and benefits for pensioners. The state pension rose by nearly £4,000 under the last Government, with an increase of nearly 9% in the last year alone, so I am proud of our record on supporting pensioners.

On behalf of the WASPI women and particularly the campaigners, I would like to reflect their intense disappointment, because the fact is that hope was held out to them by Labour when Labour was in Opposition, including by the now Prime Minister, the now Chancellor and the now Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. Who knows? Maybe even the Minister who is here today held out such hope when he was campaigning. Many people voted Labour at the election last year because they believed that justice would be done for the WASPI women, because that is what Labour candidates said would happen. The broken trust that my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings so eloquently referred to is very real.

I would like the Minister to explain why this decision was made, because there was no specific explanation by the Secretary of State when she announced the decision. Was it because the Government could not afford compensation? Was it because of their newly discovered problems with the economy when they arrived in office? If so, could they not afford anything? Nothing? No package at all could be afforded—not even a small one? Or was it because they thought that it was wrong and unfair to compensate the WASPI women, even if it was affordable? If they did think that the WASPI women are owed some money, there can be no question about paying it. Justice demands it; it must be paid. Something else must give way.

I end by making a political point, I am afraid. The fact is that this Government have made a decision not to compensate the WASPI women because they are making payments in all sorts of other directions. There are a lot of discretionary payments being announced by this Government. They have made huge salary increases to train drivers without any reforms to their productivity, they have created an energy company costing billions of pounds that does not make any energy and, most recently, they are paying a foreign country to take off our hands a UK sovereign territory that is vital to the defence of the UK. There are discretionary payments available and it would be interesting to know why on earth they have not made this one. They did not have to act in that way, and I look forward to the Minister justifying why the decision was made and saying what he will do to bring justice for these women.

Adoptive Parents: Financial Support

Danny Kruger Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Danny Kruger (East Wiltshire) (Con)]

This is a very important topic, as hon. Members have acknowledged. I was particularly struck by the specific impact of the financial regime that adopting parents face, as the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart) described in the case of her constituent Kirsty. I was also struck by her general points, which were echoed by the hon. Member for Torbay (Steve Darling), about the challenges faced by adoptive parents, including the challenges that their children continue to endure having joined their family, as well as those of the adoptive family and their birth children.

As hon. Members spoke, I was reflecting on how much more we now know about the early development of children. I compare the experience of 50 years ago, when my parents adopted my sister, with the experience that my sister has had adopting her two young sons, and the difference is pretty stark. My sister simply arrived and that was that; the expectation was that all was now well and no further support was required. Indeed, I am glad to say that things did turn out very well for my sister. The support that has been offered to her as an adoptive parent, however, is far greater and more sympathetic, and shows much greater understanding of the challenges around child development than that of a generation or two ago.

I will briefly pay tribute to the former Government who, over the last 10 or 15 years, introduced some quite significant improvements to the system that adoptive parents face. David Cameron and Michael Gove both made it a priority to ensure that the regime around adoption was improved. I have just read a leader in The Spectator praising the last Government’s performance on adoption—I cannot think that that was anything to do with the editor of that magazine—but Michael Gove does deserve credit for the work that was done, such as the introduction of adoption leave; the pupil premium and the additional pupil premium that are available for adopted children; and the priority in school admissions.

I pay tribute to my former colleague, David Johnston, the Children’s Minister in the last Parliament, who introduced the adoption support fund that the hon. Member for Torbay mentioned. It is fair to ask why additional support is needed for adoptive families and adopted children. One could argue—and I think we should—that all families need support and help bringing up children.

As we have heard from hon. Members, however, a young child almost always reaches the destination of adoption after a long journey of disruption. It is wonderful that a settled life is now available to that child, but the challenge is not over when they arrive in their new family. We all know from experiences in our constituencies how much adoptive families have to work to ensure that their children are properly supported.

It is worth noting something that I am afraid still somewhat applies, despite the reforms I mentioned: while there is an expectation that fostering families will need ongoing support after the placement of the child, in the case of adoption, the expectation remains—as with a new child born into a family—that the child is almost exclusively the responsibility of the adoptive parents and support from the outside is not necessary. However, it is necessary.

I am grateful to be able to add my voice to what we have heard about the enormous benefits that adoptive parents bring to our society as a whole by, frankly, rescuing many children who faced years of potential neglect or abuse if they remained where they were, or simply faced inadequate care and upbringing if they remained in the care system. I think of former colleagues of mine who, 25 years ago, adopted quadruplet boys aged two who had been removed from a disgraceful, appallingly abusive family. Although it was very challenging for the family and the four boys over their childhood, they have all grown up well and are doing well. Their parents are rightly proud of them. I think of the likely trajectory that those children would have been on if that family had not stepped forward to look after them—four boys who experienced extreme abuse in their early years—and the cost that would have been imposed on our society, both financial and social.

A topic that is very much on our minds at the moment is the tragedy of grooming gangs. While it is complex and every case is different, what many of the cases had in common was the fact that the girls who were victims of those crimes had been in care. The clear obligation on us as a society—as the last Government and this one have both asserted—is to have more children leaving the care system and gaining the stability and support of a loving family. That means more fostering—we all need to do more to promote fostering opportunities and help people to become foster parents—and more adopting, as we have been discussing, as well as other ways we can support children to grow up in stable families. I support initiatives such as fostering for adoption, as well as Home for Good, which is a tremendous project.

I acknowledge the work of kinship carers, who are an important part of the economy of care. Thanks largely to David Johnston in the last Parliament, they can get significantly more support, but we need to go further to ensure that they too can access support around statutory pay and parental leave.

As the hon. Member for Hazel Grove said, there is clearly an anomaly for adoptive parents, and particularly for self-employed parents, who cannot get statutory adoption pay. Unlike self-employed birth parents, they do not get the equivalent of maternity pay. As she said, there are opportunities for local authorities to provide discretionary support, but most people are unaware of that, and it is, indeed, discretionary. I am not sure that it should not be discretionary—there is an important debate to be had about the degree to which we ringfence finance and impose obligations on local authorities—but there clearly needs to be far greater awareness among the public of the support available, and greater encouragement for local authorities to fulfil their responsibilities to adoptive parents.

We need a better funding arrangement for local government so that it can take on board and fulfil its social responsibilities. Most of all, we must recognise that families are the essential welfare system in our society. The more we can do to ensure that they can fulfil that responsibility and do that important work for children who desperately need the love of a supportive family, the better. I acknowledge that the Government want to do that, and I look forward to hearing what the Minister will do in the future.

Oral Answers to Questions

Danny Kruger Excerpts

Monday 16th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Danny Kruger (East Wiltshire) (Con)]

It is good to hear Front-Benchers being so positive about their White Paper, much of which we are pretty familiar with. Let us look through some of the measures. The integration of employment and health support—we were doing that when we were in government. It was called WorkWell. My hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately) led on it. What is the youth guarantee that we have been hearing about? According to the White Paper, it

“brings together a range of existing entitlements”.

It is a very familiar set of policies. The fact is that the Government’s White Paper is just a rehash of existing support, and a bit of money with no strings attached. There is, however, one thing that the last Government were doing that this Government are not: strengthening the conditionality for benefits. The Secretary of State says that she will continue the existing sanctions, but what new measures will she introduce to ensure that people who can work will work?

[Liz Kendall]

I am not sure where to start. If the Conservatives’ programmes were so successful, why do we have a record 2.8 million people out of work due to long-term health problems, and 1 million young people not in education, employment or training? I love the 15 WorkWell pilots, but we want to join up health, work and skills support in every corner of the country, not just a few places.

There will be a different approach for young people under our youth guarantee. There will be the opportunities people need, but also a requirement to take them up, not only for those on unemployment benefit, but for those young people who can work but are out of work due to a health condition. That is the difference a Labour Government make: there is work for those who can, and proper opportunities.

[Danny Kruger]

I applaud that soundbite, but we did not hear about any new measures that will be introduced, or any additional sanctions that we need. The right hon. Member talks about what the last Government were doing. We were reforming the work capability assessment. The Office for Budget Responsibility said that our reforms would have seen 400,000 fewer people on long-term sickness benefits, saving £5.4 billion over this Parliament. The Labour Government have paused that work while they hold a review. They have had 14 years. I do not know what they were doing to plan for government—not very much, it looks like. [Interruption.] They had all that time. What were they doing? I do not know where their plans are. The Chancellor is counting the savings to the welfare budget that our party would have delivered. Will the Minister commit to implementing the reforms, and if not, how will she make the savings that she is counting on?

[Liz Kendall]

The hon. Member is laughing at his own chutzpah. I am happy to talk about the past 14 years, but the work capability assessment is not working. It needs to be reformed or replaced. That is what we said in our manifesto, and we will bring forward our proposals in a Green Paper in the spring. That has to be part of a bigger programme to help people with long-term health conditions and disabilities into work. That is what our “Get Britain Working” White Paper does, and I am happy to discuss it with him more in future.

Blind and Partially Sighted People: Employment Support

Danny Kruger Excerpts

Wednesday 20th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[Danny Kruger (East Wiltshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Torbay (Steve Darling) for his powerful testimony about the enormous opportunities and barriers in this space, and particularly to the hon. Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova) for the work she has done on this topic during her time in Parliament. She serves her constituents and this community very well.

I was struck by the interesting speech by the hon. Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme (Lee Pitcher) about the opportunities of AI, which opened my eyes to the huge barriers that blind and partially sighted people have suffered and how technology is helping to overcome those barriers. I pay tribute to his wife: learning to ski with partial sight is a tremendous achievement, so all credit to her.

I echo the points made by other hon. Members about the imperative to overcome and reduce the barriers that blind and partially sighted people face in gaining work and progression in the workplace. Doing so is an absolutely necessary matter of justice to those people themselves; it is entirely wrong that people are discriminated against, directly or indirectly, because of their disability. We therefore have a moral imperative to act. As the hon. Member for Battersea stressed, we also need to reduce barriers to employment for blind and partially sighted people for the sake of the economy; when we exclude blind and partially sighted people from employment and progression in work, the country is denied an enormous wealth of talent.

Finally, addressing remaining barriers to employment and work progression for blind and partially sighted people is necessary for the sake of the taxpayer and the public finances. Our country’s disability benefits bill is simply unsustainable. It has risen sharply in recent years and is projected to rise to unsustainable levels over the course of this Parliament. On the current trajectory, spending on health and disability benefits will rise 56%—an additional £27 billion—over the course of this Parliament if change does not happen. Overall, spending on incapacity and disability benefits will rise from 2.4% of GDP to 3% over the course of this Parliament. If we could ensure that people who are currently excluded from the workforce can gain employment and reduce dependence on benefits, we could spend much of that money better in other spaces. I therefore support what the Government aim to do in this space and their plan to get activity back to pre-pandemic levels—a noble aspiration, which my party will support.

There are two ways to approach this question, as has been touched on in the debate so far. The first is the role of the Government themselves in getting the law, benefits system and incentives right in the fiscal, legal and welfare spaces. I am proud to say that my party led the way in ensuring that we as a country tackle discrimination against people with disabilities. The Disability Discrimination Act 1995, introduced by William Hague, required employers to make reasonable adjustments to facilitate the employment of disabled people, and it remains the great landmark and a vital step in this space. We also introduced Access to Work grants, which have been discussed today. I am pleased to say that last year saw the highest number of Access to Work grant applications awarded for over 15 years—68,000, of which 3,000, I understand, were for blind and partially sighted people. That is encouraging.

Nevertheless, we clearly need to go further with Access to Work, as we have heard today. Some innovations were introduced towards the end of the last Parliament, including health adjustment passports, which aim to reduce the time that it takes people to apply for and receive an Access to Work award, by allowing people to take the statement of their disabilities and necessary adjustments from one employer to another. As I understand it, that helpful and practical innovation is now in force. The last Government was also introducing an enhanced Access to Work package, which gave employees more support than they got under the existing scheme, as well as ensuring that employers received support if they were helping to facilitate access to work. Clearly, the process remains onerous and complex—that is a condition that applies across the benefit system with its complex, difficult application process. It only recently went online and it has just become possible for all people to apply for Access to Work digitally. Improvements clearly need to be made.

I am concerned about the extent of the backlog in the application process, which began in the previous Parliament and continues. In September 2023, 22,000 applications remained outstanding; in May 2024, there were 37,000; and in October 2024, 56,000. There are significant problems in processing these applications. I am interested to hear the Minister’s views on why that is and what can be done to reduce the backlog.

We need to ensure that the conditionality and incentives in the benefit system and employment support are robust and sensitive. I look forward to the forthcoming White Paper to see how that will be achieved. The hon. Member for Battersea recommends a review of the Equality Act and I welcome contributions there. It will be interesting to see what is suggested to improve that legislation.

I am concerned, however, about proposals that rely on tightening laws—strengthening the stick side of the arrangement, as it were. As the hon. Lady said, there have been a lot of laws and programmes introduced to support blind and partially sighted people—people with disabilities—into employment, yet there are still significant problems helping them to access and progress in work. Rules will only take us so far. Indeed, as the hon. Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme talked about the role of technology, it struck me that technology will also only take us so far.

There is a danger in looking to technical solutions, whether in the law or technology, that let us off the hook for what really needs to be done. I gently point out the phenomenon of crowding out: the danger that statutory action can diminish the voluntary action that needs to be taken, in this case by employers, to do the right thing. That is the second approach that is crucial to this space; I am pleased that that was the focus of the hon. Member for Battersea’s report and today’s debate. We need to look at the attitude and culture of employers, more than the obligations and systemic responses that Government can make. Of course, Government can significantly influence the attitude of employers but, to quote the Royal National Institute of Blind People:

“There are no hard and fast rules”

when supporting disabled people at work. We should avoid making assumptions about what blind and partially sighted people can do. That is why we need a flexible approach, in which employers use their imagination and intelligence, in consultation with employees, to develop access for blind and partially sighted people in the workplace.

The way to do that is to stress the opportunity, the benefits that employers will reap and, frankly, how easy it is. I was struck by the hon. Lady’s story of what good looks like in the workplace. It sounds like human beings being human towards each other, being genuinely inclusive, ensuring that people help their colleagues literally to navigate the workplace. One can imagine the enormous benefit to that workplace and all employees when there is a culture of inclusivity and generosity, as the hon. Lady described.

The key is awareness. Many of the changes needed to make workplaces accessible are not difficult; they just need to be done deliberately as part of the policy of the Government. I welcome the practical recommendations in the hon. Lady’s report, and I look forward to seeing what the White Paper will do to implement them. I respect the Minister and his colleagues, who are genuinely dedicated to improving employment and employability. I am pleased to see what has been trailed for the White Paper, with a focus on skills, devolution, empowering local communities and opportunities for young people.

I very much hope that the White Paper will work with employers in the spirit of the report we are debating, rather than against them, but I am concerned by the policies that the Government have announced so far with respect to employers. The national insurance rise will result in thousands of pounds of taxation on every job, and new burdens on employers are being created through the Employment Rights Bill. Those are not good portents of an employer-friendly approach. Nevertheless, on this issue we agree about the direction of travel that needs to be taken, and I very much hope that my party works with the Government to progress the very helpful recommendations that the hon. Member for Battersea has made.

Food Banks

Danny Kruger Excerpts

Tuesday 19th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[Danny Kruger (East Wiltshire) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East (Seamus Logan) on bringing this debate forward. I am grateful for hon. Members’ helpful contributions, and I am happy to take interventions from hon. Members who were not able to speak if there is time.

Let me first acknowledge that I agree with hon. Members who have pointed out that the existence and extent of poverty in our country is shameful. It is a source of deep shame to our country that so many people are reliant on the charity of others for essentials. Briefly, I pay tribute to the food banks in my constituency and in my former constituency of Devizes, which do such good work. I also previously worked with the Hammersmith and Fulham food bank. I echo the points made by hon. Members about the valuable work of such organisations.

[Lee Pitcher (Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme) (Lab)]

I have seen extraordinary work and inspiring volunteers at the DN7 food bank, the Isle of Axholme Foodshare Project, Hatfield’s Pre-loved Uniform Bank and the Hygiene Bank Doncaster. Does the hon. Member agree that although their work is amazing, we do not want to see those banks grow on our high streets or even exist in the first place?

[Danny Kruger]

I am grateful for the intervention. I recognise those points and pay tribute to the hon. Member’s food banks too.

Hon. Members have cited some of the facts. It is a fact that the number of parcels handed out by the Trussell Trust doubled in the last Parliament in the light of the covid crisis and the cost of living crisis, but I emphasise that we should not take food bank use as a perfect proxy for poverty, because that data is patchy and affected by the supply of food banks. There is also an important displacement effect. It is not necessarily the case that all the need identified by food banks is new need; that need might formerly have been met by other sources, such as family and friends or other community organisations.

Nevertheless, the profile of food bank use tracks the state of the economy and the level of poverty in our country. We saw it spike during lockdowns, then decline and then spike again with the cost of living crisis. I am afraid that it has not really declined since: 1.4% of households have used a food bank in the last month and 3% in the last year, which are significant numbers.

So what is going on? I echo the point of my right hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) about the complexity of the causes of food bank use, but we recognise the obvious point that it is ultimately down to household income. The “Hunger in the UK” report points out that the main reasons for people having problems with their household income are difficulties with benefits, as many hon. Members have mentioned; the existence of in-work poverty; and the difficulty of gaining well-paid work, particularly for disabled people and carers.

[Steve Witherden (Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr) (Lab)]

A number of constituents have written to me expressing their struggle to afford food, despite being in work, and that is not an isolated issue. In mid-2022, almost 90% of those referred to food banks in Wales were in work and had such low incomes that they were living in destitution. Does the hon. Member agree that the working poor, created by the last Government, are disgracefully reminiscent of Victorian times?

[Danny Kruger]

I do recognise the extent of the problem of in-work poverty and of people reliant on benefits to sustain their incomes and on additional support from the outside. I do not accept that that was a new phenomenon; in fact, I will come to the last Government’s record in a moment.

[Antonia Bance (Tipton and Wednesbury) (Lab)]

One of the last Government’s best policies was the introduction of a £20 additional uplift to universal credit during the pandemic. It stopped poverty growing in its tracks and showed the impact of increasing access to money—not to be facile—on poverty. Does the hon. Member share my hope that the Government will bring forward their review of universal credit, as promised in the Labour manifesto?

[Danny Kruger]

Yes, indeed; I very much look forward to that review coming along soon.

Many hon. Members have mentioned the record of the last Government. I recognise the extent of low wage growth and in-work poverty that we have seen. If we look at absolute poverty, however, which is the measure that we should ultimately be looking at if we are thinking about the extent of destitution and food poverty, 1 million fewer people are in absolute poverty after housing costs in 2024 than in 2010. That includes 100,000 fewer children, 200,000 fewer pensioners, and 700,000 fewer working-age people, so the last Government made a real impact on absolute poverty. Overall, there are 1 million fewer workless households than in 2010.

Much of that impact was driven by the introduction of universal credit. Those of us who worked in the social sector before 2010 might remember the labyrinthine complexity and the perverse incentives that were created by the mess of the benefit system that we inherited in 2010, which we rationalised and improved. It is also worth mentioning the enormous £100 billion cost of living package that the last Government put together in the light of the energy shock.

Let us turn to what this Government are doing. The most significant policy that they have announced so far on poverty is the withdrawal of the winter fuel payment. Some 10 million pensioners will be denied that essential benefit, including 70% of disabled pensioners. That is surely not a record that hon. Members are proud of.

[Sam Carling]

The shadow Minister has made a point about the Government’s difficult decision to withdraw the winter fuel payment. If he feels so strongly about it, why did his party pledge to do it in 2017?

[Danny Kruger]

We did not pledge to do it and we did not do it. I think it is important to have universal entitlement to essential benefits, but if there does need to be some means testing, surely it should penalise, or withdraw the payment from, only the wealthiest pensioners, not 90% as is happening under this policy.

The other thing that the Government have done is impose a significant tax on employment through the national insurance rise, which they promised not to do in their manifesto. The cost of that will fall disproportionately on low-paid workers, who will see the impact of that tax in their wage packet.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which is no friend to my party, has pointed out that poverty is due to rise because of the Budget that the Chancellor has introduced. Every household type, except pensioners, will be poorer. Single-parent families will be £1,000 poorer. An average couple with children will be £1,760 poorer. Inequality will be higher. That is all the testament of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

The Office for Budget Responsibility points out that real wages will fall and indeed, the Budget has caused the OBR to lower its real wage growth forecast by 0.5%. As the OBR says, the Budget shifts

“real resources out of private households’ incomes in order to devote more resources to public service provision.”

That might indeed be the policy that the Government want to pursue, but the effect will to be to reduce household income, as the OBR acknowledges.

[Alex McIntyre]

Will the shadow Minister acknowledge that the OBR actually said that 90% of households will be better off under this Budget, and it is only the wealthiest 10% of households that will feel the cost, making sure that we are spreading the cost on to those shoulders that can bear it most?

[Danny Kruger]

As I said, I do not think that withdrawing the winter fuel payment from 10 million pensioners reflects a transfer of the burden on to those who can bear it most—nor does imposing a taxation on low-paid jobs.

What shall we do about all this? I am sorry to say that I have not heard enough in the debate about what could and should be done, although I acknowledge that the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East made some suggestions—many of which I agree with, particularly around the importance of having an adequate safety net. I, too, look forward to the universal credit review that the Government are bringing forward, and I strongly agree with the focus on nutrition and empowering communities.

I do not agree with the need for the essentials guarantee, although I respect that campaign. I do not think that transferring responsibility for setting benefit levels to an independent body—essentially, to an unaccountable quango—is the right way to go. The Government should be responsible for that policy, and accountable to Parliament, rather than an independent body.

If we look at the drivers of food bank use as reported in “Hunger in the UK”, we need to improve the benefits system and make it quicker and easier to use. I look forward to seeing how the Government are going to improve pension credit applications to improve winter fuel payment access. We need to drive up wages again; I deprecate the introduction of taxation on wages. We need to grow our jobs market and ensure that it is easier and better for employers to take workers on and promote them—which, I am afraid to say, the Employment Rights Bill that we are anticipating will not do, given that it imposes punitive obligations on employers from day one.

I am conscious that my time is almost up, so let me finish with this point. I praise the flexibility of food banks, and the human relationship that they imply: the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East talked about the powerful sense of community. A quiet revolution happened during the covid pandemic that momentarily offered a better social and economic model in which remarkable innovations, particularly around food and provision to the poorest among our neighbours, were enabled to flourish.

I agree that we want food banks to be redundant, but while we have hardship they can be an important part of the mix. I pay tribute to other innovations such as social supermarkets as well. Lastly, I do not agree with the hon. Member that we need a more central strategy and direction for the household support fund. Its great value is in the innovation that it enables, and the way that it empowers local communities, which he said that he believes in, to ensure that local authorities can take responsibility for supporting their communities. That is an important innovation that was brought in by the last Government, which I supported, and I hope that it will continue.