Welfare Reforms and Poverty
Debate between Debbie Abrahams and Baroness Primarolo(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
May I start by congratulating my parliamentary neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk)? I agree with him that we must reform the welfare system and make it sensitive to the needs of the 21st century. I also congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher), who is another constituency neighbour of mine—I am in total agreement with the points he raised—and the other hon. Members responsible for securing this debate.
I want to spend the next few minutes discussing a few points, particularly those that constituents have raised with me in my surgeries and elsewhere. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation annually monitors social exclusion and poverty and produces data on them. Its most recent report, which was published last month, shows that 3.5 million children, or 27%, live in poverty. In some parts of my constituency, the figure is nearly one in two. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that it expects an increase of 1.1 million children living in poverty by 2020 as a result of tax and benefit changes.
Three million parents also live in poverty. The number of pensioners living in poverty has fallen to 1.5 million, or 14%, which is the lowest level in 30 years, but the number of working-age adults without children living in poverty has risen to 4.5 million, which is the highest level in 30 years.
That is only half the story, because those relative levels of poverty relate to median incomes. The average income has gone down by 8% since 2008, which means that 2 million people who would have been deemed to be in poverty in 2008 are not classified as such now, because incomes have dropped. Incomes are going down, but prices are rising. The energy prices of the big six have gone up by 37% since 2010 and food prices went up by 32% between 2007 and 2012.
The most worrying thing—this point has already been made—is that we are seeing an increase in the working poor. For the first time since the data series started back in the 1980s, poverty in working households is higher than that in workless and retired families combined. Therefore, work is clearly not paying. In spite of a shared objective of wanting our welfare system to make work pay, it is not. I was very interested in what the hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) said about phasing in the introduction of some of the welfare measures. They have been brought in too soon, and they are having a huge impact on families.
Related to the increase in the number of working households living in poverty is the increase of the number of people in low-paid work. For 46% of working families in poverty, one or more of the adults is paid less than the living wage. In total, about 5 million people are being paid below that level, which disproportionately affects women, 27% of whom are paid less than £7.40 an hour.
If we look at the effects of welfare reforms on poverty, we find that instead of alleviating poverty, it is exacerbating it. Our social welfare model is based on principles of inclusion, support and security for all—protecting any one of us should we fall on hard times, or become ill or disabled. Welfare is there to assure us of our dignity, as well as the basics of life, and to give us a hand up, not a handout; the current welfare reforms are doing anything but that.
I want to mention Rebecca, who came to see me at my surgery on Saturday. She is blind, and not only has she had her care package reduced from 13 hours to eight hours, but she is absolutely terrified about what the migration from disability living allowance to personal independence payments will mean to her. She said, “I will not see anybody from when I see you”—her personal adviser was with her—“until Monday, because of the lack of support that I am getting.” She is not alone. A raft of measures is affecting the ability of disabled people to live as normal a life as possible.
We have heard about people on employment and support allowance, and the trials and tribulations of going through the work capability assessment. One constituent on ESA, who has a heart condition, had a heart attack in the middle of going through the WCA process. He was advised to leave and he went to hospital, but a week later he got a letter saying that he had been sanctioned because he had left the work capability assessment. That is not atypical. We have also heard about the bedroom tax, with 500,000 people affected nationally. In Oldham, where 2,048 people are affected, there are only 500 properties for them to move into, which is absolutely absurd.
We still do not know the cumulative effects of all these measures. Despite the valiant efforts of the people behind the WOW—War on Welfare—petition, which has got 100,000 signatures, we still do not have an agreement on a cumulative assessment of all the different measures.
Sanctions have been mentioned. One person who came to see me had been a Jobcentre Plus adviser until relatively recently, and he told me that there is a deliberate culture to develop a sanctions target mentality. Even if people have followed everything they are meant to do, they are still sanctioned, with bogus appointments being made to set them up to fail. That is not just, and it is not what we expect of our welfare system. The implications for health and the social effects on our communities are dire. I commend the commission—
Finance Bill
Debate between Debbie Abrahams and Baroness Primarolo(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Debbie Abrahams
The fact is that the employment rate is lower now than it was in 2008. Absolute numbers mean nothing. The rate is lower now than it was before the recession.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. The debate is, to put it politely, starting to go a little wide of the new clause. Perhaps we could focus—in a laser fashion!—on new clause 10.
Mr Newmark
There is a thing called “chutzpah”. Is the hon. Lady saying that her party bears no responsibility whatsoever for the enormous debt legacy and deficit the country was left with? The Government are making progress. More men and women are in work than ever before and the deficit is down by a third. Yes, the debt is not going down as fast as possible—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Mr Newmark, this is not an opportunity for you to make a speech; it was an intervention on new clause 10, and we would like it to be relevant.
Debbie Abrahams
On the hon. Gentleman’s final point, there is more to come in my speech: “And there’s more”, I promise—I never did a good impersonation of Frank Carson. On employment, however, the hon. Gentleman is wrong. Employment is lower than in 2008 and I will come on to that—those are official statistics, so he cannot refute them. At the end of 2010, our economy was growing, yet we have been bumbling along the bottom for three years. We had a double-dip recession and barely escaped a triple-dip recession. Growth has been downgraded at every turn.
Legal Aid Reform
Debate between Debbie Abrahams and Baroness Primarolo(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
I will try to remember your advice, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Although I am not a lawyer, I should mention that my eldest daughter is a lawyer working in prison law, so I have drawn much of what I will say from her experience.
On the proposals being an attack on access to justice for all regardless of means, we must ensure that such access is protected. Even the Government’s Treasury counsel has roundly condemned the proposals. What concerns me particularly is the fact that they will not require primary legislation, but will be pushed through in secondary legislation. That is an insult to Parliament.
A system that would restrict access to criminal legal aid to people with assets of less than £35,000 would be very different from the current system. The Government say that they do not want to pay for the defence of wealthy criminals, but people who are charged are not criminals. Indeed, that is the point of charging them. The proposed restriction breaches the fundamental principle in our legal system that those who are charged are presumed innocent until proved guilty. Article 6 of the European convention on human rights requires that they have the right to a fair trial and to professional legal representation. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy): this is akin to what might happen in a country run by a despot. It is entirely unacceptable. Our proud tradition of the right to access to the law dates back to Magna Carta, and we should not threaten that tradition.
I was also concerned to learn that in the autumn there is to be consultation on a proposal to restrict access to legal aid for recipients of benefits. The restriction of access to the law for the poor and vulnerable would take us back to the dark ages, and we must not let it happen.
Some Members have referred to the introduction of price competitive tendering, which many believe will lead to a race to the bottom and a dramatic reduction in the quality of services.
The importance of the right to choose one’s lawyer has also been mentioned. One of my constituents, who is a solicitor, told me of a vulnerable young woman who had been abused. She had been charged on three occasions, but because she had built up a relationship with her lawyer and trusted him, he was able to provide a high quality of representation, and she was acquitted. That would not happen under the proposed new system. Again, we should not jeopardise access to the law for the most vulnerable members of society. According to my daughter, it can take weeks for a trusting relationship to develop; in the early stages, one-word sentences may be the only form of communication.
There are also proposals to restrict access to legal advice in prisons. As I have said, my daughter works in prison law. I have been told that a very vulnerable client who was sentenced at the age of 15 and had served three times her sentence tariff was recently released following a judicial review. That would not happen under the new system—and she is not unique. As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), many prisoners are extremely vulnerable, and may have mental health problems or learning difficulties. It should be recognised that punishment is not the only purpose of prison. Opportunities for rehabilitation should be offered, and prisoners should have access to the law when that does not happen. It should also be ensured that facilities are appropriate for those with learning difficulties or other disabilities.
It is a myth that restricting access to civil legal aid will save money. It has been suggested that the changes relating to prison law will save £4 million, but, as we know, there will be a cost of £10.3 million.
Jobs and Growth
Debate between Debbie Abrahams and Baroness Primarolo(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
Last week’s Queen’s Speech was my first as an MP. Although nobody does pomp and pageantry better than we do, I was deeply disappointed with its content: lots of style but no substance.
When this Government came into office two years ago, we were in economic recovery. Since then, we have been bumbling along the bottom with very little growth, and now we are back in recession again. This is not due to the worst global financial crisis since the 1930s; it is due to the mismanagement of the economy by the current Downing street incumbents. Yesterday, the Bank of England yet again had to downgrade forecasts for economic growth, from 1.2% to 0.8%, and the outlook for inflation is well above the 2% target.
Yet this not the experience of every other country. The US, which was at the centre of the global crash in 2008, started to recover, like us, in 2009-10, and it is continuing to recover. Similarly, the rest of the G7 is performing better than we are. Our economic performance is one of the worst in the G7, with Italy coming up just behind us. Brazil has now overtaken us as the sixth largest economy. The austerity measures that this Government have introduced are clearly not working.
The impact on unemployment in the public and private sectors is already being felt. Last year, the public sector lost 276,000 jobs. Some have estimated that the figure will be as high as 700,000 by 2015. In Oldham, £24 million has been cut from next year’s council budget, meaning 400 job losses. That is not the end of it. My local hospital trust, Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, recently announced a statutory consultation on a further 160 redundancies. It has to find savings of £45 million this year. That comes on top of 600 posts that have already been lost. In spite of the Government’s reassurances that jobs will be created in the private sector, large and small businesses alike are closing, including BAE Systems in Chadderton, Warburtons Bakery in Shaw, Long’s Plumbing and, of course, Remploy.
Although I welcome yesterday’s unemployment figures that show a reduction in the previous quarter, I am afraid that the trend in long-term unemployment is upwards, as we have heard. In Oldham, more than 8,000 people are out of work across the borough, with 11 people chasing every job. The number of women out of work is the highest since 1995. There has been a 25% increase in long-term unemployment among the over-50s. In my constituency, the number of jobseeker’s allowance claimants has increased by 20% since June and doubled since 2006. Young people in my constituency have been particularly badly hit, with a 288% increase in long-term unemployment since last year. Worryingly, young black and Asian men are disproportionately affected, with 56% and 23% respectively being unemployed. Those figures have doubled since 2008, so we should be very worried about that problem.
What was there in the Queen’s Speech for those people? Absolutely nothing. At the Select Committee on Work and Pensions yesterday, I was profoundly disappointed by the apathy and complacency about what is going on and about how it can be addressed. The youth contract is not geared towards focusing on these problems and only quick fixes have been introduced. There are inequalities not only between different population groups, but on a geographical basis. The urban heartlands of Greater Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Glasgow, Cardiff and parts of London are most affected. The Government’s talk about fairness is just that—
Future of the NHS
Debate between Debbie Abrahams and Baroness Primarolo(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Debbie Abrahams
Does not the hon. Gentleman think that that is why we won the election in Wales?
The savings required are 4%, and if the Government get their way with the new economic regulator Monitor, they could go as high as 7% each year—far more than our NHS is capable of coping with.
My constituent, Peter, was refused a cataract operation, yet his vision was so poor that he was able to see the world only through a haze; as a precision engineer, furthermore, he was not able to do his job and faced the threat of redundancy. In other cases, non-compliance with NICE guidelines—on familial hypercholesterolaemia, for example—is leaving people at extreme risk of untreated cardiovascular disease.
Health professionals have almost without exception castigated the Bill for what it will do to the NHS in completely opening it up to the market, with competition law applying in full and allowing private health care providers to cherry-pick profitable services. A hospital medical director said last week that he did not know how his hospital could continue to provide care for unprofitable patients.
The unprofitable services for most hospitals are elderly care, mental health, paediatrics and maternity, which are essential services for all communities. Instead of service providers and commissioners working together to provide the best quality care they can for their patients, the trend is for hospital trusts to maximise income and compete against each other. We are already seeing that lack of co-operation when PCTs look at alternatives in commissioning. Trusts are reluctant to collaborate when they see that it might reduce their income, even if it improves the quality of patient care. Similarly, the Bill gives GPs a financial interest in restricting or refusing treatment in order to make savings and to get bonus payments from the NHS commissioning board.
Labour wants genuine savings that will enhance patient outcomes rather than produce the diminishing effect that we are currently seeing, and we believe that we can achieve that. We want hospital specialists and GPs to work together to deliver clinical care pathways that improve the quality of patient care and bring care closer to home. One local PCT is trying to introduce the use of drugs that are cheaper—and unlicensed—to treat age-related macular degeneration, but it is under severe pressure from the pharmaceutical industry. That is another way in which we could reduce costs.
There is no doubt in my mind that, unamended, the Bill threatens the founding principles and values of the NHS. It removes the duty to provide a comprehensive health service, and provides an opportunity for the new NHS commissioning board and GP consortia to charge for services. It involves a costly, ideologically driven reorganisation of the NHS that has no mandate from the British people, and no support from health professionals and that will mean the end of the NHS that we know and love. As I have said before, the NHS is not just an organisation that plans and provides our health care; it reflects the values of our society on which this country set such store.
I know that there are many members on this side of the House—