Welfare Reform and Work Bill (Eleventh sitting)

Debbie Abrahams Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Priti Patel]

May I begin my remarks by thanking the hon. Members for Livingston and for Birmingham, Yardley for their thoughtful contributions? This is an important area, to which the Government naturally want to develop the right approach.

I should like to make two points. The change in housing support debated thus far refers specifically to the new youth obligation that will be introduced from April 2017, the purpose of which is to help young people to develop the skills and experience they need to get into work. Specifically, from day one of their claim, young people will benefit from an intensive period of work-related support, which will include job search support, interview techniques and structured work preparation. After six months, having built up their work preparation and received support to help them to get into employment, they will have the choice of applying for an apprenticeship or traineeship, of gaining the work-based skills that employers value, or of taking up a work placement. The youth obligation will be integrated with universal credit, ensuring that those moving into work will be better off and supported.

With regards to the housing changes, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley was right in her comments and in the representations she has made to the Government. She has heard that the Government are focused on protecting vulnerable people.

The hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury made a relevant point about the definition of vulnerability. We want to ensure that we get that right, so we are currently working with a wide range of stakeholders to understand those vulnerable groups. That work needs to be completed for robust policy and, importantly, for support, measures and exemptions to be put in place to help those groups. That work is still under way.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley touched on a number of stakeholders, some of whom we are working and engaging with. Should she like to present others to the Government, we would be very happy for her to do so.

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

Will those consultations be completed before Report and Third Reading?

[Priti Patel]

I will be honest: I simply do not know, so I will find out and come back to the hon. Lady on that.

The hon. Members for Birmingham, Yardley and for Livingston touched on the various groups that cannot rely on the stability of a family home. We are focused on that and want to do everything we can to help those young people. That is the reason for the exemptions to protect the vulnerable. We are discussing the policy with landlords, housing associations and charities, who provide a unique perspective on the groups discussed.

I hope we can work together on stakeholder engagement. As I have said, that work is under way and the policy will not be introduced until next year, which gives us time for the detailed approach we absolutely need. I therefore urge the hon. Member for Livingston to withdraw her new clause.

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Let us step back for a moment and ask ourselves whether pulling the rug out from under working families is really a fair way to cut spending on welfare. After all, along with making work pay, fairness has been the principle repeated ad nauseam by Government Members, almost to the point where the concept seemed to have been stripped of any meaning at all. If we consider the reality of the enormous gap between what the Government have told us they want to achieve with their welfare reforms and the effects that these cuts will actually have if we allow them to go through, we see a policy that fails whichever way you look at it. It is a failure in the Government’s own terms, it is a failure in economic terms, and, above all, it is a failure in moral terms.

[Debbie Abrahams]

My hon. Friend is making a very powerful speech. Has she read the article in the British Medical Journal last week, which looked at the impact on child poverty? It stated that an extra 200,000 children will be plunged into poverty, but it also looked at the effect on child health. The UK already has the highest rate of child mortality for under-fives, which can be directly attributed to the additional child poverty that is faced in this country. The implications of this are really significant.

[Emily Thornberry]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. There are many arguments against the tax credit cuts, and although it is tempting to rehearse all of them this morning, another debate is going on elsewhere. Essentially, I cut down a long speech to a short one to make the main points.

I was talking about the policy being a failure in moral terms, as my hon. Friend illustrates well. The focus today might be down in the Chamber, but members of this Committee have the real power. They have in our hands the power to do the right thing and to put the interests of working families in their constituencies ahead of the interests of their party. They have in their hands the power to put the interests of children in some of the poorest working families first, remembering that, even as things stand, two thirds of children in poverty have a parent in work. How much worse will it be after they have suffered the cuts to tax credits?

I am sure that Conservative Members who have an interest in this field are, deep down, genuinely and gravely concerned. When we put the new clause to the vote and when their Whip holds up the piece of paper saying no, will they look aside, think about the thousands of their constituents who will be so greatly affected by the Bill and vote with their conscience, vote the right way, and stop this now?

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[Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Debbie Abrahams]

Will the Minister give way?

[Priti Patel]

No, I will not give way.

[Debbie Abrahams]

On a point of order, Mr Streeter. The fact is that child poverty was reduced during the period the right hon. Lady is referring to, and so was pensioner poverty. Not to have the opportunity to challenge those points is a question for the Chair, I believe.

[The Chair]

I am afraid that is not a point of order, but the right hon. Lady has skilfully made her point, and there is of course an opportunity for others to speak after the Minister, should they wish.

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[Priti Patel]

They will benefit from tax-free childcare. That will be available for families whose children are at school—basically, those who are still school age. That is a Treasury policy.

[Debbie Abrahams]

Will that cover school holidays?

[Priti Patel]

My understanding is that tax-free childcare will cover after-school clubs and school holidays, but I will get clarification—[Interruption.] Well, I will give the hon. Lady clarification.

The point I would like to make is that, as we discussed in the previous sitting, the Government have a very strong record on childcare provision, tax-free childcare and support for disadvantaged two-year-olds. The fact that we have been spending in excess of £5 billion on supporting childcare provision for working families should be welcomed by all parties. It is sad that political parties choose to point-score about childcare provision.

We are clearly going to disagree on the content of the new clause. I have highlighted how the increased personal allowance, the national living wage and the welfare changes announced in the summer Budget will provide support for working families. For the reasons I have set out, the new clause is not appropriate for inclusion in the Bill, and I urge the hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury to withdraw it.

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Despite years of pressure, Ministers have repeatedly resisted efforts to have a full inquiry. In new clause 17, we offer them an opportunity to reconsider; in fact, we offer them an opportunity to provide for an inquiry in law so that they can no longer duck and dive, trying to avoid collecting evidence on this fierce and unfair regime. We urge the Government to support the new clause. If they will not, we would ask them simply: “What are you afraid of?”

[Debbie Abrahams]

I am very pleased to support the new clause, and I congratulate my hon. Friend on her excellent speech.

I have been campaigning on this issue for more than two years. I started when a constituent came to me and told me that he had been going through the work capability assessment process when the nurse conducting it said, “I think you’re having a heart attack. You need to go to hospital.” Off he trotted, and he was okay, but, two weeks later, he got a letter through the post saying that he had not completed the assessment so he was going to be sanctioned. That was how this all started for me. I thought, “Possibly this is just a one-off,” but then I heard more and more cases not only from constituents but from people right across the country. That corresponded with the introduction of the new sanctions regime at the end of 2012 as part of the Welfare Reform Act 2012.

People on not only employment and support allowance but JSA were being sanctioned. Sometimes that was for being a few minutes late. I have heard other examples of increasingly unreasonable reasons, such as people being sanctioned for attending their mother’s funeral or, absurdly, for going to a job interview. That is the ridiculous state the sanctions policy is in.

I have also heard of another worrying category of reasons, which can only be described as fabricated. I still have an email from a constituent saying that he had been sanctioned because he had not attended an interview with his adviser. He came to my office and showed me the evidence that he had not seen that specific adviser but he had seen another. He asked how he could possibly be sanctioned.

I wondered what on earth was going on, but it all fell into place when another constituent came to see me. He had been an adviser in various Greater Manchester jobcentres for more than 20 years. He was so appalled with what was going on that he had to tell me. He said that there were targets for sanctions that are part of the performance monitoring for jobcentres. The aim is to get people off flow, and sanctions were the way to achieve that.

My hon. Friend mentioned the recent inquiry, but before that the Work and Pensions Committee undertook an inquiry into the role of Jobcentre Plus in the reformed welfare system. When the then Minister came to the Committee I asked whether she would undertake a more detailed, independent inquiry. The Select Committee thought that she had agreed to that. Paragraph 100 of its report states:

“We strongly believe that a further review is necessary and welcome the Minister’s commitment to launch a second and separate review into the broader operation of the sanctioning process.”

As we know, there has been a bit of backtracking on that. The report concluded:

“Our evidence suggests that many claimants have been referred for a sanction inappropriately or in circumstances in which common sense would suggest that discretion should have been applied by JCP staff. DWP should launch a second, broader, independent review of conditionality and sanctions, to include investigation of whether the process is being applied appropriately, fairly, proportionately and in accordance with the rules, across the Jobcentre network.”

That was an all-party report indicating that the situation was very worrying.

In addition to those very serious ethical issues, there were and still are concerns about the numbers of people affected, and in particular the meteoric rise in the use of sanctions for employment and support allowance claimants. Between December 2012 and 2015 jobseeker’s allowance sanctions were 3.6 million, including 1.7 million adverse decisions. In the case of ESA sanctions—remember, those affect people who have been found not fit for work—from November 2012 to March 2015 there were 245,679 sanctions, including 68,400 adverse. That compares with the June 2010 to October 2012 period, when there were 60,363, including only 27,919 adverse. That is more than a doubling in ESA sanctions.

As my hon. Friend said, the regime is particularly punitive. A sanction is for a minimum of four weeks and can be for up to three years. The Government have said that it is very unlikely that people will be sanctioned for three years, but I am afraid it has happened. It particularly affects young and disabled people and lone parents.

During 2013-14 it became clear that although no other benefits, for example housing benefit, were meant to be affected, they were. As soon as someone was sanctioned, they were automatically having housing benefit and other benefits stopped. That exacerbates the position of people already on incredibly low incomes.

[Emily Thornberry]

Might I take advantage of this moment to point out that, when my local law centre takes up appeals on sanctions, it has a 100% success rate?

[Debbie Abrahams]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Cases are often overturned on appeal, but for someone on ESA—that means they are not well—going through that process is traumatic and can exacerbate the condition. I will come to that in a moment.

My hon. Friend mentioned the Oakley review, which reported in July 2014. It looked specifically at the JSA sanctioning. It was an important step, but there were still many unanswered questions, which is why the Select Committee wanted to look at it in more detail.

I am aware of the dreadful circumstances of food bank use to which my hon. Friend has alluded—in my area, 60% of food bank use is attributed to sanctions. More shockingly, I am aware of the reports of accidental deaths following sanctions. Those have been included in coroners’ reports, so I do not mention them lightly. David Clapson was one particular case. He was a former soldier who gave up his job with BT to care for his mum, who had dementia. When she died, he wanted to get back to work and signed on at the jobcentre. He missed an appointment with his job adviser and was sanctioned. He was diabetic. Without the £71.70 a week from his jobseeker’s allowance, he could not afford to eat or put credit on his electricity card to keep the fridge where he kept his insulin working. Three weeks later, David died from diabetic ketoacidosis caused by a severe lack of insulin. He was 59. A pile of CVs was found next to his body. The coroner said that, when he died, he had no food in his stomach. His sister, Gill Thompson, has campaigned tirelessly to get an independent review into sanctions. The petition she started has more than 211,000 signatures to date.

David is not the only person to have died following sanctions. There have been 49 peer reviews following the death of a claimant, but the DWP is still not prepared to release the details of whether sanctioning was involved. I hope Ministers reconsider that.

The Work and Pensions Select Committee inquiry reported in March. If anything, the Opposition’s concerns from the previous inquiry worsened. The negative impacts on poverty, including child poverty, debt, physical and mental health, were reported. The Committee was given the example of a woman who had discharged herself when she was in hospital because she was frightened of being sanctioned.

There is evidence that the sanctions targets were driven by targets to get claimants off-flow, distorting the JSA figures. As my hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury has mentioned, the team from Oxford analysed data from 376 local authority areas and found that 43% of JSA claimants who were sanctioned left JSA. As my hon. Friend said, 80% did so without having a job.

The main recommendation from the Select Committee was for a more detailed independent inquiry. Matthew Oakley said that he expected that to happen. I am at a loss as to why the Government are dragging their feet. Surely that is the very least we should do for the people who have lost their lives following sanctions and for their relatives. I hope the Committee will do the right thing and support the new clause.