Oral Answers to Questions

Drew Hendry Excerpts

Monday 14th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justin Tomlinson]

I simply do not accept that. We are increasing the numbers of people who will benefit from the PIP system, we continue to improve the claimant’s journey, and we work extensively with our stakeholders to make sure that improvements are ongoing. By the end of this Parliament, we will be spending more money in this area than we are today.

[Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)]

One of my constituents, a Mr McLoughlin, is registered as blind, but he has been denied, through the access to work scheme, essential equipment to help him work. The reason given was that able-bodied people would also be able to use the equipment. I am interested to know what equipment the Minister believes an able-bodied person could not use that a registered blind person could. Will he personally look into Mr McLoughlin’s case and that of others who face the same difficulty?

[Justin Tomlinson]

I will happily look into it, because without having all the details I cannot comment. On the broader issue, we are now helping more than 38,000 people a year—close to record numbers—with the access to work funding, which is in the fourth year of growth, and we have just secured funding for a further 25,000.

Oral Answers to Questions

Drew Hendry Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Disabled People (Justin Tomlinson)]

I join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to the fantastic work of the Multiple Sclerosis Society. Only two weeks ago, I was at the Swindon branch’s 50th anniversary. The society has a huge number of volunteers across the country who are making a difference. Its work toolkit stands out as an example of best practice, both for employers and employees, and I am keen for that to be highlighted and for that best practice to be shared among other organisations.

[Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)]

The Minister’s latest proposals to change the way in which personal independence payments are assessed will be a further blow to disabled people, who have been among the hardest hit by the UK Government’s austerity measures. I know from my constituents who are experiencing lengthy delays that the assessment process is not yet working. Will the Minister abandon these latest proposals, which will narrow disabled people’s eligibility for benefits, and instead focus on getting this part of the process right rather than adding complex changes that will reduce the support available to disabled people?

[Justin Tomlinson]

We are doing ongoing work with disability groups and user groups following the Paul Gray review, which flagged this as an area, and we are determined to get a clear and consistent policy as we analyse those consultation responses. The length of time for an assessment has fallen by three quarters since June 2014. It is now down to five weeks for an assessment, and 11 weeks median end to end. That has been a settled position for quite some time now.

Welfare Benefit Changes

Drew Hendry Excerpts

Wednesday 14th October 2015 Westminster Hall

[Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I give my apologies because, as you know, I have to leave before the end of the debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) on securing this important debate. I would talk about tax credits, child poverty and working families, but I am aware that a lot of people want to speak. We have already heard powerful speeches and I am sure that we will hear more. I will therefore focus on what is a constant issue at my constituency surgeries.

The Government’s new proposals build on existing failures that will further punish those in need of our help. In Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey, an ever-rising number of constituents get in touch with me about their personal independence payment claims. There is the gentleman who has just had a second stroke but been deemed fit to work, and the young man with severe disabilities whose benefits were removed because the very action of his carrying a letter handed to him by his carer from the assessment room was evidence enough for an Atos assessor to make a judgment on his reading abilities.

Four out of 10 decisions made by Atos are later overturned. The stress people are put through in those assessments is incredible. There is a woman who, having worked all her life, now holding down two jobs, faces eviction because her husband took ill but was deemed fit for work, despite his being housebound. They can no longer make their rent; they are currently three months in arrears and shortly they will be knocking on Highland Council’s door as homeless, leaving their private rental and joining the 10,000 people waiting on the Highland housing register.

Day in, day out I see the pain and suffering my constituents are put through just to get an Atos appointment, for the lack of a home visit is the first hurdle for many disabled people. I have listened time and again to people describe the process in the assessment room. They use words such as degrading, inhuman and disgraceful, which are repeated often. Each and every one of them faces a catalogue of questions when the primary aim seems to be to find a hook to remove or reduce their benefit entitlement.

Minister, why is it that 30 minutes in an assessment room counts for more than months and years of medical records, or indeed the medical advice of those who are treating people on a daily basis? Why is it that I constantly find myself astonished that those people have been even asked to make their way to attend an interview, given their severe medical conditions?

[Justin Tomlinson]

I am conscious that the hon. Gentleman will not be here for my response. The process takes more than an hour, and it is nothing to do with whether an individual is fit for work. PIP is different from ESA and the assessor is not making a decision on whether someone should get a benefit. Their job is to help the individual complete the forms to present the strongest possible case to the DWP staff. I feel that he is mixing up two benefits.

--- Later in debate ---

[Drew Hendry]

I encourage the Minister to come and speak to people in my surgeries who have had to go through this, because I do not recognise the procedure he describes and neither do my constituents.

Indeed, even those who have degenerative illnesses are asked to attend assessment and reassessment. By the very nature of their illness, those people are not getting better. Why on earth does anyone find it acceptable to keep reminding them of that while subjecting them to punishing assessments? Why is my office dealing on a daily basis with constituents who, because—often aided and struggling—they can walk 50 metres, are cut off from mobility support?

[Justin Tomlinson]

Under the old DLA system, 71% of people were given lifetime awards, but the conditions of one in three people changed significantly within a 12-month period. Without a reassessment, huge numbers of people were on a lower benefit than they were entitled to, which is why, under DLA, only 16% of people got the highest rate of benefits. Under the personal independence payment, that figure is 20%. It is right to make sure that people get the appropriate amount of support.

[Drew Hendry]

I thank the Minister for that intervention, but again I have to say that he must get out there and speak to people in our constituencies, because their experiences are not reflected in his remarks.

I will conclude, because I am conscious that other people should speak in the debate. The effects of benefit changes are wide-ranging and widespread. I urge the Government to reconsider those punishing changes. We have also heard about the changes to tax credits and the vulnerability of the working families who will be affected. A great number of people in my constituency will be pushed into further poverty because of those changes in the coming months. I urge the Government not to use vulnerable people and the disabled as scapegoats for what is, essentially, a failed austerity agenda.

Child Poverty

Drew Hendry Excerpts

Tuesday 15th September 2015 Westminster Hall

[Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) on securing such a vital debate. My constituency is perhaps not the first to come to mind when thinking of areas where poverty strikes, but our enduring challenge is the low-wage economy. Unemployment is low in comparison with many other areas, but low wages are the biggest threat to children growing up there. Indeed, low wages, coupled with the increased cost of living, have certainly played a part in 210,000 children in Scotland living in relative poverty, many of whom come from families in which at least one parent is working. That should quite simply be considered an outrage.

We often hear the UK Government talk of making work pay, yet policy decisions achieve quite the opposite. In my constituency, that means one in five children growing up in poverty, with the figure as high as one in three in some parts. Changes to the tax credit regime will, without question, further worsen the living conditions of over 7,000 children in Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey, as up to £1,000 a year is taken out of family budgets. The measures announced in the Budget are regressive, and it is children in families with the lowest incomes who continue to be hit hardest. It should be borne in mind that the proposals will affect life chances in areas of high deprivation, and families who are on the radar of financial distress. They will also be part of daily life for those who are afraid to admit to their situation, through fear of unwanted service disruption or sheer embarrassment at the stripping away of layers of personal pride that the removal of support leads to.

I want to share how, in the highlands, in-work families will lose out as a result of the tax credit regime changes. Limiting tax credits to two children results in the removal of £7.2 million from welfare payments in Highland—simply put, that is £7.2 million from low-wage, low-income families. Removing the family element of tax credits takes £4.02 million from welfare payments in Highland, which is £4.02 million from low-wage families. Increasing the tax credit taper from 41% to 48% means the removal of £7.77 million from welfare payments in Highland. The reduction in income thresholds in tax credits equates to a removal of £33.33 million from welfare payments in Highland, which is a further £33.33 million from low-wage families. I will stop with the numbers, but everyone in the Chamber knows that they go on and on.

I want to ask the Government this: in our low-wage but low-unemployment economy, how do such cuts ever help make work pay? They do not. Families are already struggling with housing costs, heating bills and food prices, and parents face a harrowing choice between heating their home or putting food on the table, with some even wondering if they will still qualify for the food banks because of the number of their visits. In a growing number of cases, due to the oppressive sanctioning regime faced by my constituents and many others, there is the phenomenon of no-income poverty.

Thank goodness the Scottish Government have, by paying, done what they can across the piece to mitigate the outrageous bedroom tax imposed on Scotland. In the highlands there are virtually no one or two-bedroom social housing units, which has been a real problem. Through no fault of their own, people have been scared and intimidated. Again, they have had to be compensated by the Scottish Government.

Poverty robs children of their childhood. Children and young people growing up in poverty face limited life chances. We surely should not accept any child growing up without a fair start in life. The charity Barnardo’s Scotland says that its caseworkers have recorded numerous cases of having visited homes where there was literally no food in the cupboards. The UK Government need to take action to reverse, not increase, child poverty. As others have said, these children are more likely to live in poor housing, to suffer chronic illness in childhood, and to die at birth or in infancy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Evans]

We will let you get away with that.

Child poverty is an age-old problem. Writers such as Charles Dickens, in the 19th century, J.B. Priestley, whose “An Inspector Calls” was recently adapted by the BBC, and the great socialist George Orwell have all chronicled poverty and its effects throughout the years. Yet however much great literary works and great authors have covered the scourge of poverty in all its forms, the problem has still not been solved.

Poverty at its extreme affects the two most vulnerable groups of people in society, the very old, who often have to make the choice between heating and eating, and the very young. We have heard many statistics, but for so many people across the country, in constituencies we have already heard from, in Scotland, in the north—including Manchester—and in Wales, poverty is a way of life. Extreme poverty means young people go to school hungry, not having been able to eat breakfast that morning. They do not have the equipment they need to gain the skills to succeed. Very often, they will return to substandard accommodation that is damp, and they will become ill. They have failed before they have even begun.

The sad fact is that, despite all the campaigns throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, poverty still comes down to one thing: someone born into poverty will probably die in poverty. As in the time of the great writers I mentioned, the challenge for society is to end poverty in all its forms.

I do not believe that people become politicians—come to the House of Commons or, indeed, go into Government—to oversee an increase in poverty, but that is what we have seen from this Government. If we look at the figures after housing costs have been taken into account, over 27% of children in my south Wales constituency are living in poverty. Across Wales, one fifth of all children grow up poor. In the UK—the fifth richest country in the world—more than 4 million children are living in poverty. None of their parents wants things to stay the same; they want to provide more for their families. Not one of them does not want to escape the tiring, punishing reality of being poor.

It is no good, however, simply setting out the challenge we face, which other Members have eloquently described. Anyone who cares about our country’s future and our constituents’ lives must now seek solutions, because it falls to this generation to eliminate poverty in all its forms.

The problem cannot be solved by simply throwing more money at it. That has been tried, and we still see poverty on a scale we cannot imagine. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation report “What will it take to end child poverty?” stated:

“Ending child poverty is only partly about transferring money to poor households. A long-term solution must involve much more, tackling the root causes of poverty and in particular giving families opportunities that help them gain greater control of their own lives.”

We can do that only if people work. We can have all the Government schemes we want, but the best way to end poverty is to have working households. While people are stuck—dependent on the welfare system—they will never have control over their own destiny or the ability to break their family out of poverty. They will suffer poverty of money and, yes, poverty of ambition.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation states that truly tackling child poverty will require us to provide considerable personal support to people who are likely to face a combination of disadvantages in terms of entering the labour market. We can overcome those disadvantages, but only with targeted, personalised and localised support. That cannot be done just through existing public sector structures. Instead, there needs to be a partnership between public bodies, private bodies and, above all, local communities. We must harness the financial power of the Government, the innovation of the private sector and people’s knowledge of their own lives and communities—the people who know what is best for communities are those who live in them. We must put in place strategies that reach the poorest, the hardest to help and the most disadvantaged.

The last Labour Government made great strides with a public sector approach, but the world has moved on. The challenges in 2015 are not the same as they were in 1997.

[Drew Hendry]

Notwithstanding the hon. Gentleman’s wise words about tackling the issue on a longer-term basis using a real plan, which I absolutely subscribe to, does he agree that the actions taken by this Government in the short term do nothing to help those who are already working, but who are below the poverty threshold, and nothing to achieve the long-term ambitions we should all share?

[Chris Evans]

I agree. The hon. Gentleman used the phrase “short term”, and the problem with this Government’s approach from the beginning is that there has been too much short-term thinking. The problem in politics may be that we think from one election to the next and do not plan for the long term. I believe that poverty is at its highest level at the moment because people are too fixated on the stereotypes perpetuated by the press—the idea that someone finds themselves on benefits not because they have fallen on hard times, but because they are some sort of scrounger. We must end that stereotype if we are to move on. That is where the long term comes in.

Child poverty will be solved only by a Government who are firmly focused on the issue in the long term. The distinction between the public, private and third sectors must be broken down. In the pursuit of a country where no child is born poor, there can be no qualms about harnessing the best of private enterprise and the best of social action. In practice, that will mean contracting diverse providers from charities to recruitment companies and agencies to deliver employment support. It will mean private companies showing the social responsibility we have always talked about and working with people who face severe disadvantages in terms of entering the labour market to put in place individual strategies to overcome those problems. It will mean families who are stuck in poverty receiving one-on-one support that is tailored to their needs from any willing provider who can provide the best support.

The one-size-fits-all model of Jobcentre Plus and the welfare system has comprehensively failed, to the extent that Ofsted found that Jobcentre schemes have a success rate of less than 1%. Rather than pursue that model, the Government should work with any company or organisation that can help. No stone should be left unturned. This is not about taking an ideological approach and saying the public sector is always right or the private sector is always better. This is not about left or right, or about Welsh, English Scottish or Irish; this is about doing what works to end child poverty.

The people trapped in the punishing reality of being poor will not care where the support comes from, as long as it works. However, it must be part of a new contract with them. The Government will work with anyone who can provide support, but individuals must take responsibility; they must accept that if the country is there for their family, they must be as well. It must be Britain’s moral mission to end child poverty, but all the support we can provide will not be enough if people do not take responsibility. They cannot be allowed to see welfare as a way of life, to be the worst possible example to their children and to sustain the culture we see in far too many communities where joblessness is the norm. The deal must be: “We will help you, and you will get the support you need, but, in return, you have to work, to provide for your family and to be responsible for your spending.” That is how we end child poverty and lock in a country where no child is born poor. Without ensuring personal responsibility, any action we take to help the poorest children will be reversed, and we will never break the poverty of ambition that traps poor children into a life of poverty.

--- Later in debate ---

[Justin Tomlinson]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. That is a fair point. At the moment, we are seeing about 1% a month coming off the ESA benefit. It is a poor success rate and we would expect far better. In his speech, the hon. Gentleman was bang on, in that we need to have localised individual responses. We need better support and to have more businesses signing up to provide those opportunities. We are looking to reform that and are in consultation. I spent much of the summer with my Minister for Disabled People hat on, doing visits and looking at the best ways that that can be done in the changes. Given the record of 1% a month coming off that benefit, and with people often then slipping back in, it is incredibly important to address that looping effect.

The wider issue is a tragedy for each and every family, because families in which no one works lose their sense of self-worth.

[Drew Hendry]

From the Minister’s words, I am sure that he, personally, very much wants to see a long-term solution to the problem, but he mentioned a long-term ambition. Does he not accept that by not having a short and medium-term option for people in work at the moment, they will be punished and pushed further into poverty by the removal of those working tax credits, particularly in constituencies such as mine, where there is relatively low unemployment but very low wages?

[Justin Tomlinson]

I will address that later, so please be patient for a little bit longer.

Children grow up without the aspiration to achieve. They become almost certain to repeat the difficult lives of their parents, following a path from dependency to despondency, rather than to independence. At the beginning of my remarks, I talked about my background. That is what drove me into politics. We all have our calling, our passions and our priorities. That very much was what drove me into politics. As I said, I think we all share the same end goal; there is just disagreement on how we would look to achieve it.

On our record on worklessness and poverty, I highlight that many hon. Members have referred to the IFS statistics throughout the debate. I sound a strong note of caution on that. The statistics have been wrong every single year since 2011, and in the summer, they were half a million out, so I attach a big note of caution to the predictions and doom-mongering.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Drew Hendry Excerpts

Monday 20th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Dowden]

I am afraid that I cannot, because I am subject to the time limit.

We concluded that it should not be possible to earn more on welfare than a person who had gone out and worked every single day could earn after tax. We also concluded that it should not be possible to leave school and immediately start claiming benefits. I think that those are fair principles, and I think that principles are better than mere salami slicing.

All this has given rise to a need to change the measure of child poverty. It was absurd when Gordon Brown spent huge amounts of time and money showing people one side or the other of an arbitrary line. We are looking at more fundamental principles and measures of what drives poverty. Living in a workless household is one of the biggest drivers of poverty, and I think it right to take account of the massive reduction in workless households that has taken place under our Government. Lack of educational attainment is another huge driver of poverty. I know that such opportunity-based measures are dismissed by Opposition Members—including, as was clear from his speech,. the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms)—but I think that they are vital if we are to establish whether we are merely putting a sticking plaster over poverty, or addressing the fundamental causes.

[Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Oliver Dowden]

I have some time left, so I will.

[Drew Hendry]

That is very gracious of the hon. Gentleman.

In my constituency, 3,900 working families will have lower incomes as a result of the Government’s changes, and 7,100 children will be pushed into poverty. Can the hon. Gentleman tell me how that encourages people to think that working is a good idea?

[Oliver Dowden]

First and foremost, we are introducing a national living wage, which will deal with the current problem and give people a massive pay rise. Ultimately, however, there is a wider point to be made. Opposition Members are decrying every single measure in the Bill, but if they oppose our welfare reform measures, they must be able to tell the House and their constituents what measures they themselves plan to introduce. Which other welfare costs do they intend to cut, and which other taxes do they intend to increase—or do they intend to continue to borrow, thus forcing our level of national debt ever higher?

That is the contrast between Labour and the Conservatives, who are willing to make difficult decisions. None of us enjoys making those decisions, but we make them in a principled fashion that sets the economy and the country on the right track.

Scotland Bill

Drew Hendry Excerpts

Tuesday 30th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)]

On whether or not people should suffer a further sanction, I want to ask the hon. Gentleman about circumstances encountered by one of my constituents. He was sanctioned for not turning up to an appointment with the Department for Work and Pensions, but his letter had been sent to the wrong street, albeit the same number, and he was not aware of the appointment. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is wrong to further impose a sanction after that?

[Mr Allen]

The whole sanction regime needs a proper and thorough review, and it should be based on evidence of the sort the hon. Gentleman brings, as I can, rather than on prejudice and electoral gain. Although it may, sadly, go down well in certain leafy suburbs, those of us who have relatives who are pensioners or people with a disability, and those of us who represent people who are suffering because of the bedroom tax, have a slightly different perspective. I am trying to share it with some Government Members, but, sadly, this is with a mixed degree of success.

On amendment 132, exception 6 uses the example of non-compliance, but if someone’s claim had been wrongly suspended—the point the hon. Gentleman makes and I fully support—they would be put in a worse position as they would also lose discretionary housing payments. If the rhetoric about trying to get people back into work and about making work pay is meant, making people suffer a double disbenefit flies in the face of trying to help individuals back into work. It is a catch-all and a broad brush, and it is insensitive.

One of the best ways to tackle those problems, which we all encounter in government, is to make government as close to people as is humanly possible. My suggestion in this case is that that should be within the province of the Scottish Parliament, but in other cases we may even be talking about a lower tier of government. I wish briefly to deal with the question of double devolution, which was raised from the Front Bench by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray), but just to finish on amendment 132 let me say that it would remove the provisions and the possibility I have described altogether. In summary, it would give the Scottish Parliament the ability to pay the discretionary benefit when a person cannot be paid a reserved benefit such as housing benefit. That is relatively straightforward and I hope I have put it as succinctly as possible.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Redwood]

I do not think that it would be necessary to go that far. At present, there is clearly a disproportion between the size of Scotland and that of the rest of the United Kingdom, and, as the hon. Gentleman’s budget figures show, a lot more money is collected elsewhere than in Scotland. That, however, is not the point at issue. [Interruption.] I am not asserting anything; I am just asking a question. We are engaging in a crucial debate on how much welfare power should go to Scotland. I am one of those who agree that some welfare power should go to Scotland in accordance with Smith, but we have to ask how far it goes, and what the consequences might be.

If countries have a common work area and a free movement area, and if they share a language, a labour market and a currency, that arrangement can bring benefits when it has settled down, because it is backed by political union. When we start to unpick the political union, we must ask ourselves at what point that unpicking of that union, or the welfare transfer union, will become damaging. A point will be reached when it does become damaging, because one part of the country will be too attractive, or too unattractive, compared with another part. A single currency area as big as the United Kingdom can work only if there are fair systems for raising money from the rich, wherever they may be in that big area, and giving enough to the poor, wherever they may be.

[Drew Hendry]

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that parts of the United Kingdom are already more unattractive because of decisions on welfare spending? The bedroom tax is one example. In the highlands, there are some 70 communities with no one or two-bedroom properties on the social register for people to move to. How can it possibly be fair for that principle to apply across the UK, when the people who live there are unable to cope with that heinous tax?

[John Redwood]

I fully understand the arguments against the spare room subsidy, or the bedroom tax. I understand the politics of it only too well. I do not want to go into my private views now, but it is a matter to be settled within the Union Parliament, and by the Government of the Union, under current powers. It does not make good law to say that if there is a particular benefit that people in Scotland do not like very much, that is the one that we should be able to fix. We need to come up with a settlement for a longer-term period which takes account of the principles.

It is for that reason that I am presuming to spend just a few minutes reminding colleagues that very big principles are involved in this instance. We need to secure the right balance, one that enables Scotland to feel that it can make enough of its own decisions to meet the mood of the majority, but falls short of giving it so much power that the Union’s mechanisms for switching money around do not work. I find it very difficult to make decisions on this Bill without knowing what the financial settlement will be, because it will not work unless there is enough money to make it work, or if England does not think that it is fair to them. Scotland may well find that the financial settlement is not fair to them—I am sure our SNP colleagues will not be shy if that is the case—but England has delivered big majorities for me and many of my colleagues, so we have a mandate and a voice and we need to make sure that the financial settlement that emerges is fair to us. The range of powers that Scotland has will have a bearing on that settlement.