Welfare

Eilidh Whiteford Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Crabb]

I am, of course, very familiar with the excellent work that my right hon. Friend, and other Members on both sides of the House, have done with the all-party parliamentary group, and we certainly want to involve and include the group in the discussions that we are having. I should also put on record my appreciation of the fantastic work that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Disabled People has already been doing with disability groups and charities.

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

I welcome the new Secretary of State to his role and thank him for advance sight of his statement. I think he knows that he is inheriting one almighty mess. As the debacle has unfolded, there have been untold adverse consequences not just for those who depend on personal independence payments, but many others, such as those who are set to lose £30 a week in ESA, the thousands of low-income families affected by cuts in work allowances under universal credit, the thousands of mostly disabled people already affected by the bedroom tax, and the women born in the 1950s for whom the goalposts have been shifted relentlessly on their state pension age.

Last week, the Government proposed taking a further £4.3 billion out of the pockets of disabled people to fund tax cuts for the wealthiest. Even by their standards, that was a new low. I am glad that they have been forced to backtrack on the latest round of PIP cuts, but the policy’s problems are more fundamental. The PIP roll-out has consistently failed to meet the Government’s own implementation targets and has been dogged by inordinate delays. Meanwhile, the Government have missed every single opportunity to sort out the fiasco of the implementation of universal credit. Indeed, their cuts have butchered the aspects of universal credit that might have created work incentives. Instead they have hammered low-paid workers, in particular those with children.

I said last week that the Government have remained wedded to austerity as a political choice, even when that has meant a heartless and callous disregard for the wellbeing of disabled people. Now those same people have become pawns in an increasingly bitter Tory civil war. Parts of the social security system, including PIP, are set to be devolved to the Scottish Parliament, yet there has been wholly inadequate consultation and engagement with Scottish Ministers ahead of the changes coming into effect. I urge the Secretary of State to take the opportunity to go back to the drawing board not only on PIP, but on the wider social security reform agenda, including the cuts to ESA and work allowances. Will he meet disabled people and work with them? Will he meet me and my colleagues to identify a more constructive way forward?

[Stephen Crabb]

I thank the hon. Lady for her series of questions. She listed several specific issues, all of which are high up in the in-tray that I have inherited at the Department, but I do not recognise her description of my inheritance. When I arrived at Caxton House yesterday and again today, I found that I had inherited an amazingly committed, passionate, capable group of civil servants and an amazing team of Ministers, who share a real determination to work together in unison to carry on reforming welfare.

On Scotland specifically, I have already checked the matter out and the working relationships in the Department, at both ministerial and official levels, with the Scottish Government are positive and constructive. I want to look at that and will be making an early visit up to Scotland. Perhaps we can carry on the discussion about the new devolved powers that Scotland will be getting.

State Pension Age

Eilidh Whiteford Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

My hon. Friend, who has spoken about the matter on a number of occasions, is right, and I thought that we had that consensus. We certainly had it during the last Parliament, because the Liberal Democrats in the coalition agreed with us. The hon. Member for Pontypridd has mentioned the former Pensions Minister, who was keen to get a state pension age review. The Pensions Commission has said that increases in the state pension age are essential and that an independent body should be established to review them. We are doing exactly that.

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

Life expectancy in Scotland still lags around two years behind that in the rest of the UK. That gap persists across all social demographics and costs the average Scottish pensioner around £10,000. However, I am just as concerned about healthy life expectancy, which determines the age at which people start to experience illness and disability that limit their capacity for work. Healthy life expectancy is not rising at the same speed as life expectancy; in fact, the gap between the two is widening. Given the Government’s reductions in support for sick and disabled people of working age—we are due to discuss those changes later today—can we have any confidence that further increases in state pension age will not simply condemn thousands of older people with serious health conditions to an impoverished old age on state benefits prior to their official retirement?

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Eilidh Whiteford Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

We discussed this issue in Committee. I just reiterate that the Government are right in our approach: we are focused on tackling the root causes of poverty. Ultimately, as the Prime Minister said in his recent life chances speech, we are here to make sure we can tackle those long-term root causes. This is not just about measurement. The economy cannot be secure if we spend billions of pounds on picking up the pieces of social failure. Economic reform and social reform are not two separate agendas, they are connected to one another. Therefore, it is imperative that we focus our resources on how we can transform people’s lives, which is through tackling the root causes.

The path I urge the House to take is the one that will incentivise the right action, and the one that the evidence tells us will make the biggest difference to children’s life chances. That is precisely why the Government are seeking to introduce the life chances measures contained in the Bill. The statutory measures on worklessness and educational attainment, combined with the non-statutory measures in the forthcoming life chances strategy—such as family breakdown, problem debt, and drug and alcohol dependency—will drive the right actions to transform children’s lives.

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Priti Patel]

Just bear with me a second. [Hon. Members: “Ooh!”] There is no need to be childish. I will give way to the hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting).

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Burrowes]

I will speak to Lords amendments 1, 8 and 9. Let us be realistic: we can get involved in adversarial politics on poverty, but we are all in the same business of wanting to alleviate child poverty. Whether or not Lords amendment 1 is agreed to, we need to recognise that it would not in itself transform the lives of children in poverty. Similarly, the previous Government’s focus was on income-related measures, but they were not in themselves going to transform child poverty.

The issue could be used, as it was in the speech by the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), to parade the child poverty credentials of the previous Labour Government. We could spend our time—we have not got much time—criticising that approach and saying that it did not get to the root causes of poverty and truly transform the outcomes for those most in need.

Lords amendment 1 is about reporting data and about how to focus activity, including Government measures, on those who are most in need. We need to ask what will focus Government policy on this issue like a laser. Despite some of the lurid claims, not least those made by the hon. Lady, the policy was not in any way a device to hide cuts. Let us get rid of that idea, because that is not what this is about. This is about making a genuine attempt not so much to redefine child poverty, but to refocus attention on its root causes.

As has been seen during the long passage of the Bill, this reiteration of the policy has had cross-party support, as well as support from many NGOs involved in fighting child poverty, particularly the Centre for Social Justice, which has worked hard in this area. The right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field), the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, hit the right tone. We want to ensure that we do not distract attention from what is needed to transform people’s life chances. That is what the issue is about.

I am concerned about what Lords amendment 1 would do. This well-intentioned amendment received support from many in the other place, but it would go back to and reintroduce arbitrary measures. Such points have been made—I will not repeat them—by my hon. Friends the Members for Torbay (Kevin Foster), for North Devon (Peter Heaton-Jones) and for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully). For example, Lords amendment 1 would risk the reintroduction of measures based on current parental income, which would take away the focus on raising attainment and on increasing life chances for disadvantaged children.

I do, however, have a way forward to propose. I cannot deal with it in relation to Lords amendment 1, which will simply reintroduce child poverty measures with all their failings, but we must look for such a way that recognises the potential opposition in the Lords. As we all acknowledge, financial poverty has a significant effect on life chances. We cannot ignore that, and Government publications on such measures have proved that point. We must therefore look at how to make reference to financial poverty, but keep the particular focus on tackling the risks to life chances.

Eventually, if the Bill goes back to the other place, I propose that consideration is given to an income measure that will act not as a focus in itself, but as a gateway to other measures, and that will ensure Government policy is directed, as it currently is, to those most in need of support. We should consider introducing a gateway measure for families based both on whether they have a low income and on life chances risk measures, with a particular focus on those in permanent poverty. It would ensure that maximum support is given to those stuck in poverty, and that the Government focus on those who are most in need.

Briefly on Lords amendments 8 and 9, I share the concerns that were well rehearsed by my hon. Friends the Members for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen), for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) and for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy). We met the Minister together. I recognise that the Minister and the Secretary of State have a genuine commitment to this as a reforming measure. We really need to get the White Paper out there so that the Government’s commitment to reform can be seen clearly.

I recognise that the WRAG is not fit for purpose, as only 1% are getting into work, but it does have a purpose. It has a purpose for the most vulnerable individuals, for whom the financial element of £30 really matters. The way we show our compassion is in how we treat the few, not the many. For those few people, that £30 will have a big impact on their lives. Whether we like the WRAG or not, whether we think these people should be in the support group, which they may well be moved into, or benefit from PIP, they are concerned about the loss of this payment. When dealing with those with progressive illnesses, remitting illnesses or mental health conditions—the Government’s commitment of £1 billion of investment is wonderful—what we do must be matched by careful concern.

As we move towards 2017, with the flow of new applicants, we must do all we can to reassure everyone that we are in the business of reform. We must not only enable more people to get into work, but deal with the practical elements. My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford mentioned energy costs. That is undeniably an issue that must be dealt with practically. I will support the Government tonight, but we must get the White Paper out and show our practical support in meaningful ways before 2017.

I will hold the Government to account, as will my hon. Friends, to ensure that we deliver. We must show that we are on the side of these people, we must show our compassion and we must do all we can, for example through Disability Confident events like the one that I have on Friday, to show that we are on this in a way that previous Governments have not been. We must show that we want to see people’s lives transformed through work, but also that we will support people with the safety net, which we are proud of. Even after the WRAG measures, we are more generous than the previous Government were in relation to the disabled. We must not be deflected from the task of supporting people into work and supporting people in the safety net. It is not a pull factor—let us not make that case. We want to reform the measure to ensure that it really works for people who need support and are not able to get into work immediately, but let us keep our focus, as the poverty measures will do, on those who are most in need. I will hold the Government to account over the coming months to ensure that they really mean what they say.

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford]

Earlier today, I attended the vigil outside Parliament that has been organised by Disabled People Against Cuts to draw attention to this debate and to urge the Government to listen to what the House of Lords said about the cuts to support for disabled people and to accept its amendments. I will focus on Lords amendments 8 and 9.

The proposal to reduce employment and support allowance for WRAG by about £30 a week for new claimants has been a focal point of this debate, precisely because the Government promised that they would not cut the support for disabled people and yet are doing exactly that. They have done it indirectly through policies such as the bedroom tax and the inclusion of carer’s allowance in the benefit cap, on which I am glad the courts have forced a U-turn; and they have done it directly through cuts to the independent living fund, DLA, Motability and Access to Work. Now, they are cutting direct financial support to disabled people through the measures in this Bill. They are putting sick and disabled people on the frontline of their austerity agenda, hitting the incomes of those who are already disadvantaged. These people are being asked to take the biggest hit, even though they had the least to begin with.

The first critical point that we need to understand today is that to receive ESA, a person has to be assessed as unfit for work. Believe me, the bar on that is already pretty high. People who are too sick or disabled to work are placed either in the support group, meaning that they are not expected to look for work, or in the WRAG, where it is recognised that they have only limited capacity, but could potentially undertake preparatory activity with a view to returning to the labour market at some point. So let us be quite clear: the people who are set to lose out from the Government’s £30 a week cut to ESA are people who are not able to work because of their health.

That is why the Chancellor was talking nonsense when he spoke about this measure removing “perverse incentives” in the benefits system. It is his logic that is perverse, although his choice of language is damning and revelatory. If someone is seriously sick or disabled, reducing their income will not make them better quicker. There is not a shred of evidence to support that ill-founded fantasy, but there is plenty of evidence that financial worries and the stress associated with work capability and PIP assessments have a negative impact on people’s health. A large and growing body of evidence suggests that hardship and stress slow down recovery and push people further away from the labour market.

Some people affected by the proposed cuts will have faced long-term disadvantage because of a serious health condition or disability, and they may find it difficult to access the labour market or sustain employment. In contrast to ESA, jobseeker’s allowance is for the most part a short-term benefit. Depending on the state of the economy, the vast majority of jobseekers move off JSA in a few weeks or months, but those with long-term health conditions and disabilities are far more likely to face long-term unemployment. The barriers we face are very real, and many people will have to live on extremely low incomes for lengthy periods. Many also incur extra living costs simply because of their condition or disability.

Having to get by on an extremely low income for an extended period is one factor that entrenches poverty among disabled people and those with long-term illness. People use up their savings and end up selling their assets, and they depend on others. The poverty experienced by disabled people is well documented, but it often becomes family poverty as other family members try to support loved ones financially from their own incomes, while providing unpaid care that limits their own earning potential.

The cuts to ESA will cause real hardship and are quite unnecessary. They are based on a flawed and frankly offensive misconception that people with serious long-term health conditions are malingerers who need to be prompted into work with “tough love”. A large proportion of the people who rely on ESA are those who have become disabled or developed a condition in adult life—people who have paid taxes and national insurance contributions for many years previously, with the perfectly reasonable expectation that if they become unable to work for health-related reasons, there will be a safety net for them. That safety net must take realistic account of the extra costs of living with disability, and to reduce support is callous and plain wrong. Even the Lords recognise that, and the Government must acknowledge it and think again.

The Lords also expressed concern about the implications of universal credit for working disabled people. We know that disabled people are more likely to work in low-paid jobs, and they are at higher risk of living in poverty. The disabled worker element of working tax credit currently provides support for disabled people who are in work to cover the extra costs that they incur by holding down a job—costs that in some cases would otherwise make it financially disadvantageous to be in work. With the move to universal credit, the loss of the limited capability for work element to everyone except those in the support group means that a lot of working disabled people will be around £1,500 worse off every year. Among those who will be worst affected are disabled working parents who currently receive the disabled worker’s element of working tax credit. Under universal credit, disabled working parents will lose that extra support.

Around 43,000 families in the UK with at least one working disabled parent will take a substantial drop in income when universal credit is rolled out. As Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson pointed out in the Lords, a couple with two children and both parents working in low-paid jobs, where one parent has become disabled, could receive a massive £3,000 less in 2017. The Government say that they want to improve employment support for disabled people, but slashing the incomes of those who are already in work, and who depend on that support to keep them in work, is not the way to go about it. Surely the Government have learned lessons from the failure of the Work programme—we have heard quite a lot about that today, and I think they acknowledge that it has not worked.

Surely it is far more effective, empowering and dignified to provide extra support directly to working disabled people, so they can spend it on the transport or equipment that they need to make work viable for them. Instead, the Government seem to think that it is more effective to take money out of the pockets of working disabled people, and give it to highly paid executives and private sector companies to tell those disabled people how to stay in work, without any of the resources to back that up. It makes a mockery of the Government’s claim that they want to support disabled people into work.

The Government have based their whole argument on the notion that work is the way out of poverty, but they have conveniently ignored the fact that two thirds of children in poverty have parents in work, and that the introduction of universal credit will leave millions of working families financially worse off. The Minister’s claim that the Government want to support disabled people into work would be a lot more plausible if they had not already cut the independent living fund, mobility allowances and DLA—the very forms of support that help disabled people to get a job and stay in work. The Government now plan to cut support for working disabled people on universal credit. Their position is simply not credible.

If the Government choose to ignore the Lords today and push ahead with these measures, it will be testament to an arrogance and unwillingness to recognise the needs of disabled people that has already seen them dragged through the courts for indirect discrimination. The Lords have made eminently reasonable amendments to the Bill that would ensure that those who need support get support at perhaps the most difficult time of their lives.

I urge Conservative Members who are wondering what to do this evening to take heed of the experiences of sick and disabled people in their own constituencies—maybe even in their own families—and support the Lords amendments in this group this evening.

Work Capability Assessments

Eilidh Whiteford Excerpts

Tuesday 9th February 2016 Westminster Hall

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for what I think is the first time, Mrs Moon. I congratulate the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) on securing this debate.

The dysfunctionality of the work capability assessment has been a recurring theme in Parliament for as long as I have been here. It has been a running sore for the Government, so I am glad that in recent months they seem finally to have acknowledged that tinkering with the system will not fix it, and that a fundamentally different approach is required. I look forwarded to the much-heralded White Paper expected this spring, which I hope will tackle some of the problems.

We have heard about a wide range of problems associated with the work capability assessment. If the Government are serious about devising a better system, it is important that we all understand the present shortcomings fully, so that we are not destined simply to reinvent the wheel and create another heartless bureaucracy that fails to provide the safety net of support that people need when they are sick or disabled.

Over the last few years, successive reviews of the work capability assessment have been conducted by Professors Harrington and Litchfield, and various attempts have been made to improve the process, some of which it is fair to say have helped around the edges. However, due to recurrent problems with getting appropriate medical background information on claimants’ conditions, with how claimants are categorised and with the accuracy of the assessments, the impact has been limited. One private sector contractor has left early under something of a cloud, as the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley described in some detail, and another company has taken over the contract with a remit for changes, spending more money per assessment and awarding support to a larger proportion of claimants.

However, the underlying problems are still there. The work capability assessment itself remains unfit for work. Many claimants wait an inordinate time for assessment: as we have heard, it takes an average of 23 weeks for a decision, and the current backlog is 280,000 cases. I know that my constituents are still battling the challenges of travelling significant distances from remote and rural locations to assessments. In the past, constituents of mine who have made long and expensive journeys have been sent home unassessed because their appointment was double or even triple-booked. That does not apply only to my area; it echoes a point made by the hon. Member for West Lancashire (Rosie Cooper). Such administrative issues, particularly delays in assessment, cause claimants distress and financial hardship at a time when they may be exceptionally vulnerable and facing severe financial worries due to a sudden and sharp drop in income after a breakdown in their health.

However, the greatest weaknesses of the work capability assessment relate to how it measures the impact of fluctuating and progressive conditions on a person’s fitness for work. Several hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe), my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) and the hon. Member for Glasgow East (Natalie McGarry), mentioned the situation of people with mental health conditions. My hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran mentioned Parkinson’s UK, which cites examples of assessments conducted by staff who lack the basic clinical knowledge to understand that Parkinson’s is a progressive and incurable condition that will deteriorate over time. I am not a medic, but even I know that. It seems pretty basic to me.

That is why it is crucial that additional evidence from qualified clinicians familiar with the claimant’s health be brought into the assessment process from the start. I pressed Ministers on this issue repeatedly during the previous Parliament, but we now have an opportunity to get it right and ensure that we have the information in the system to make good decisions possible.

[Mark Durkan]

Does it not strike the hon. Lady that although we often hear from the Government, in relation to many other arguments, that policy and Government decisions must be based on evidence, on this fundamental matter the Government rigged the legislation, so that medical evidence could be ignored in favour of the bizarre assumptions and interpretations that the people who carry out the tests come up with?

[Dr Whiteford]

As ever, the hon. Gentleman makes an important point clearly. There is no reason why people’s medical history should not be included in the assessments. Often, consultants—sometimes it is a GP, but in cases of serious illness it is more likely to be a consultant—are in a position to provide insight into the longevity of a condition as well as its immediate acute effects.

[Neil Coyle]

Is the hon. Lady aware that the Government, during the last Parliament, also shortened the timeframe within which individuals can provide independent medical evidence? As it takes longer to see a consultant or specialist, that inevitably means that some people cannot provide that information in time, which contributes to the number of reassessments, the backlog and the cost to the taxpayer.

[Dr Whiteford]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The shortening of the timeframe makes it extremely difficult for people to contribute, which is why that opportunity needs to be included right at the start. If people can nominate someone—an advocate, a consultant, a GP or a community nurse—to provide such information as part of the application process, we could get around a lot of those problems.

For people with complex disabilities, people who suffer from more than one condition or people whose condition fluctuates, the tick-box exercise of the work capability assessment fails to capture the impact of their health on their ability to work. Around half of those in receipt of employment and support allowance have a mental health condition, yet the work capability assessment has proved poor at accurately assessing conditions that are not visible, and people with mental health or incapacity issues are not always able to articulate well the effects of their condition.

I pressed hard during the last Parliament for improvements to how mental function champions operate within the assessment process, but there is increasing evidence that as things stand, the work capability assessment causes so much distress and anxiety for some people that it is actively harming their health, pushing them further away from being able to work and—in extreme cases such as the ones mentioned by the hon. Member for Glasgow East—towards harming themselves.

The Royal College of Psychiatrists has expressed serious concerns for some years about the impact of the work capability assessment on the health of people with mental illness, but as evidence of harm grows, the college is becoming more outspoken. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran pointed out, robust research conducted at the universities of Liverpool and Oxford suggests a correlation between mental health problems and the roll-out of work capability assessments. That backs up the findings of voluntary sector service providers such as the Scottish Association for Mental Health, which has extensive experience of people who use its services suffering setbacks in their recovery due to the assessment process.

The bottom line is that too many people are still being wrongly assessed. We know that because of the extraordinary success rate when claimants who have been found fit for work appeal that decision. Between 2010 and 2013, it hovered around the 40% mark; since the introduction of mandatory reconsideration in 2013, it has shot up to around 54%. In other words, more than half of those who appeal are likely to get the original decision overturned. Successful appeals on that scale indicate major underlying flaws in the assessment process, and they cost the Government a lot of needless time and money. More than that, they mean that sick and disabled people are left feeling abandoned and desperate for months without the support that they need. The human cost is enormous, as is the financial cost, as the National Audit Office has pointed out.

We must also remember those who do not appeal but who are nevertheless extremely unwell or seriously disabled. Many people in our constituencies who are destitute or living in extreme poverty are people whose access to ESA has expired, or who have been found fit for work but cannot qualify for jobseeker’s allowance—because they really are not fit for work and cannot comply with the conditions attached to JSA, or because they have tried to comply but have been sanctioned, or because they have disengaged from the system altogether and have simply dropped out of view.

I have no idea how many people fall into that latter category, but I know that I am meeting such people regularly. They live off other family members or friends, some of whom are themselves not wealthy, and they depend on food parcels from church voluntary groups or food banks. Consequently, when the Government consider how they might proceed with a replacement for the WCA, they need to take on board the systemic failures of the current approach and think beyond simplistic functionality.

The first and probably the most valuable thing that the Government could do is to work with disabled people and their representatives from the outset. Throughout the past few years, health and disability organisations have been coming forward with constructive suggestions to improve the existing system, and contributing to the successive reviews. Some of their ideas have been taken on board, at least partially, but the opportunity presented by a new White Paper to get stakeholders around the table and—more significantly—really listen to what they say has never been more important.

I also urge the Government to go back to the work that was done around the evidence-based review of 2012-13 and the alternative assessment that was developed under that process. I know that Ministers were not convinced by that review at the time, but a lot of water has flowed under the bridge since then, a much stronger evidence base has been developed and I think there is a lot of substance in that review, not least in the way that it suggests descriptors that would account for the impact of pain and fatigue on a person with an illness or a long-term condition. That review could really usefully inform a new approach.

Lastly, I urge the Government to learn from international experiences. The UK does not have a disproportionately high number of sick and disabled people compared with the rest of the OECD. Clearly, there are regional variations, even within the UK, with higher numbers of claimants in economically deprived or heavily industrialised areas, where health outcomes and life expectancy are significantly lower than average. On the whole, however, we are grappling with the same challenges as other industrialised countries and on a broadly similar scale.

A number of countries have used what have been called “real world incapacity assessments” that take account of a person’s age, skills and work experience, as well as their health or disability, when assessing their fitness for work and considering what kind of work they might be able to do. This seems just to be common sense and means that someone is assessed as a rounded human being. The same condition with the same severity will affect two people differently in relation to their ability to work, depending on whether their work experience has been in physically demanding manual jobs, whether they sit at a desk or whatever. The Government should explore the models used in other countries to see what is working well.

We all agree with the Government that the social security system needs to support people to move towards work, but it also needs to provide a safety net and a dignified life for those who are not fit for work, and not only those who will never return to work but those with long-term conditions and those who need time to recover from serious illness or injury.

The work capability assessment has failed a lot of sick and disabled people, and it has proved extremely inefficient. What follows must be better, and I hope that the Government’s keenly anticipated White Paper will reflect the concerns that have been raised today.

Oral Answers to Questions

Eilidh Whiteford Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justin Tomlinson]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that point, which goes to the very heart of it: it provides the flexibility to allow local authorities to work with organisations such as the police, social services and medical professionals. The Local Government Association recently said:

“Councils can bring local services together in a way central government will never be able to in order to ensure no-one falls through the cracks.”

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

Last week’s Court of Appeal ruling that the bedroom tax discriminates against disabled people comes hard on the heels of a ruling in November that the inclusion of carer’s allowance in the benefits cap also discriminates against disabled people. The Government have been forced into a climbdown on carer’s allowance. Why will they not do the same on the bedroom tax and end discrimination against disabled people?

[Justin Tomlinson]

In fact, it was about whether it is possible to find such exemptions or whether discretionary housing payments give the right flexibility. What we do not want to do is create an artificial line that some people will then just fall beneath and not be able to get support. The £870 million gives the flexibility to work with different agencies. Let us remember: the 1.7 million people on the housing waiting list and the 241,000 families in overcrowded accommodation welcome any moves to help to free up those valuable family homes.

[Dr Whiteford]

That really is just sophistry. The UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is currently investigating the UK for grave and systematic violations of the UN convention on disability rights. Ministers should be thoroughly ashamed that the UK is the first country to face such an investigation. Does the Minister agree that scrapping the bedroom tax is actually the best thing the Government could do to bring their policy into line with articles 9 and 20 of the convention, which ensure accessibility for disabled people, including access to housing, an adequate standard of living and social protection?

[Justin Tomlinson]

We are very proud of our record and refute the allegations of that investigation. I absolutely will not abandon the 241,000 families in overcrowded accommodation and the 1.7 million on the housing waiting list. They want us to do this and we will carry on doing it.

Disabled People: Support

Eilidh Whiteford Excerpts

Wednesday 27th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle) on bringing the debate to the House. As he said, it is timely not only because of the debate in the House of Lords later today, but because of yesterday’s developments regarding carer’s allowance. Indeed, as we have been sitting here in the debate this morning, the Court of Appeal has ruled that the bedroom tax is discriminatory. These things all stack up. They show that the Government’s approach to support, including financial support, for disabled people is completely wrong.

[Barbara Keeley]

I had not heard the news that the hon. Lady has just announced, and I am delighted to hear it. I introduced a ten-minute rule Bill to exempt carers from the bedroom tax, but Government Members shamefully spoke against it.

[Dr Whiteford]

I thank the hon. Lady for making that point. She has a very strong track record of standing up for carers.

Disabled people and those with long-term health problems have faced huge upheaval and uncertainty during the past few years as the austerity measures have kicked in. For many, the changes to social security have already left them significantly worse off and living in precarious and reduced circumstances.

A couple of weeks ago, I was privileged to meet some of the disabled people who came to Parliament as part of the lobby organised by the Disability Benefits Consortium. I pay tribute to it and the other organisations that brief us on the real experiences of disabled people. We need to listen to them, because their experience should inform policy far more than it does at the moment.

As I mentioned, we are having this debate on the day when the Lords will vote on aspects of the Welfare Reform and Work Bill. There has been speculation that the Government may well face another defeat, on the cuts to employment and support allowance that were mentioned earlier. I moved amendments to the Bill on Report, which I am pleased to say were supported by Opposition parties, that would have removed those changes. They are deeply regressive and punitive on people whose disabilities are so severe that even under the very flawed work capability assessment, they have been found unfit for work.

I would be among the first to acknowledge the shortcomings of the work-related activity group classification. It has not been helpful or effective for anyone, and I echo the wider point made by the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) about the ESA process. However, the key point in our debate today is that people placed in the WRAG are people who are not currently fit for work. There is a wealth of evidence that piling financial or moral pressure on people when they are recovering from illness or living with long-term health conditions does not motivate them to get better any faster; it actually makes them more ill. Living in poverty while too unwell to work simply compounds the challenges that sick and disabled people already face and slows their recovery.

We get to the heart of the matter when we look back at the original announcement. Last summer, during his Budget statement, the Chancellor said that ESA was supposed to end what he termed

“some of the perverse incentives in the old incapacity benefit, but instead it has introduced new ones.”—[Official Report, 8 July 2015; Vol. 598, c. 333.]

Quite seriously, that is what he said. He seems to think that ESA creates incentives for people to be disabled or sick. It is the Chancellor’s thinking that is perverse, because there is absolutely no incentive for any person to live with the limitations, the pain, the social insecurity and the material disadvantage of disability. If the Chancellor thinks that £102 a week of ESA creates an incentive, he must be wired to the moon.

Research published by the Disability Benefits Consortium for an earlier stage of the Welfare Reform and Work Bill showed that 70% of the disabled people surveyed by the consortium believed that further cuts to ESA would cause their health to suffer. Other hon. Members have alluded to that. The word “further” is most telling, because we need to understand the context of the cut in the work-related activity component. As others have said, it comes on the back of the Welfare Reform Act 2012, which allowed for the transition from disability living allowance to personal independence payment, cutting the budget for support for disabled people by £1.5 billion a year and significantly raising the bar on who can receive support.

Let us not forget that the bedroom tax was also a direct assault on the incomes of disabled people. Even when the legislation was going through Parliament, the DWP’s impact assessment showed that two thirds of the households that would be affected were home to someone with a disability. In Scotland the impact was magnified, and eight of 10 households affected were home to a disabled person. I am glad that the courts have ruled that the policy is discriminatory, as has been said all along and as hon. Members stated repeatedly in the House at the time. When we talk about the latest cuts, we must remember that the people who are being sanctioned are disproportionately affected by disability. We really should not need courts to determine those things when we have the evidence before our eyes.

We must take cognisance of the fact that the new measures come at a time when disabled people are already struggling on reduced incomes—and they are really struggling. The hon. Member for North Tyneside (Mary Glindon) laid out in some detail just some of the practical ways in which that manifests itself. The Disability Benefits Consortium research revealed that 57% of respondents had found that the amount of ESA that they currently received did not cover the extra costs of living with disability, and, as a consequence, many experienced difficulties in paying for essentials like food, extra heating and the extra transport costs that they may incur.

I want to touch briefly on the parliamentary review, “Halving The Gap?” led by Lord Low, Baroness Meacher and Baroness Grey-Thompson, which makes valuable recommendations. The report notes that some 500,000 people with physical or learning disabilities, mental health problems or autism are currently assessed as being unfit for work. I want to emphasise that that is the reality. People in the work-related activity group have been assessed as not fit for work, even under the stringent criteria of the work capability assessment, and slashing their incomes by £30 a week is only punitive. It cannot make them better more quickly. It will not incentivise them back to work. It will only make them poorer. For some, it will damage their health. The Government say that they want to halve the disability employment gap, but the policy is still without substance. We are still waiting for a strategy, and I hope that the Minister will bring forward more substantial proposals.

The barriers that disabled people face in accessing and sustaining employment are real, so concrete support through the social security system is vital. Often, it is financial support that people need. The difficulty is the Government’s track record; they have had to be dragged through legal processes to force them to make changes. Last time we debated the matter, I raised the High Court ruling that the DWP had unlawfully discriminated against disabled people on the issue of carers and the benefit cap, as the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) mentioned. Yesterday’s Government U-turn was not announced in a parliamentary statement; it was sneaked out on Twitter. That is an interesting way to do things.

It is sad that it has taken a legal challenge for the Tories to accept the damage that their obsession with austerity, and their willingness to put disabled people on the frontline of austerity cuts, is inflicting on disabled people. Disabled people should not have to fight through the courts for recognition of their rights, and we should not need a High Court judge or a Court of Appeal judge to determine that the benefit cap and the bedroom tax discriminate against those people. I am glad that the Government have been forced into retreat on the matter, but I hope that they will now take far more seriously the disproportionate impact that their cuts are having on disabled people, who are already disadvantaged.

The inquiry by the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is a real indictment of the Government’s approach to supporting disabled people. I reiterate the point that the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark made in opening the debate: the UK is the first country to be investigated by the UN in relation to the convention. The Prime Minister has tried to dismiss the investigation by saying that

“when you look at these investigations you find that they are not necessarily all they are originally cracked up to be.”—[Official Report, 21 October 2015; Vol. 950, c. 600.]

It is completely and utterly shameful for the UK Government not to take the matter more seriously. The UK is being investigated on the world stage for

“grave and systematic violations of the Convention”,

and the Government need to learn some humility.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) raised some devolved matters from a Northern Ireland perspective. In Scotland, we have made serious efforts to distance ourselves from the UK Government’s shameless and regressive approach. We have tried to insulate the most disadvantaged people from the worst aspects of austerity cuts by establishing the welfare fund and the Scottish independent living fund, and by mitigating the bedroom tax in full. No one is complacent about the impact that income cuts and sanctions are having on sick and disabled people, however, and there is a lot more that we all need to do.

The UK Government, first and foremost, need to start listening to disabled people and taking their views on board. They seem to want to bulldoze through cuts to ESA. I strongly urge them to learn from the High Court judgment, the Court of Appeal judgment and the UN, and to think again.

Access to Jobs: Disabled People

Eilidh Whiteford Excerpts

Tuesday 12th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian C. Lucas) for securing the debate. He spoke powerfully about his constituent who has been personally affected by the decision taken in the last Parliament to close the Remploy factories. As many of us predicted at the time, that move has had a devastating impact on the lives of those directly involved, the vast majority of whom have been unable to move into alternative employment. That has been the case for Margaret and others we have heard about today.

Few would disagree with the aspiration of the Sayce review of supporting disabled people into mainstream employment, but that has proved much easier to hypothesise than actually to deliver. Too many disabled people who are seeking work find it difficult to enter the labour market or to access the kind of support that they need to help them to sustain employment.

Let us not forget, however, that about half of disabled people of working age are in work, most of them in mainstream jobs. Obviously, there are some disabled people whom we cannot expect to work, but there are also disabled people currently not in work who could, with the right support and workplace adjustments, overcome the disadvantages that they face in the labour market, and we have heard about many of them today.

We should also remember, though, that access to employment for disabled people takes place in a wider economic context. For instance, I do not think that the closures of the Remploy factories really took account of the economic situation at the time, or the local economies in those areas where the factories were based. In most cases, there have been scant opportunities for those people since the factories closed.

Disabled people are far more likely to be in work in times and places where jobs are plentiful. It is always easier to find a job in an area of low unemployment than in an area where many people are chasing every vacancy. The barriers facing disabled people are sometimes related less to their disability than to prospective employers’ preconceptions about what they can and cannot do. We therefore need to acknowledge that although disabled people have certain legal protections in work, getting a job in the first place is often much more difficult, especially for those who disclose invisible or fluctuating conditions, like those alluded to by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), or for those whose health conditions have left them with a patchy work history. We need to be honest with ourselves in this place about the extent of the disadvantage affecting disabled people in the labour market.

It is very difficult in a short debate such as this to do justice to such a broad topic, but as the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) reminded us, the Government had a manifesto commitment to halve the disability employment gap and now need to bring forward a credible strategy on how they intend to do so. At present, disabled people are disproportionately employed in the public and third sectors. Many are in organisations that have active equal opportunity policies in place and monitor the recruitment and retention of disabled staff. Unfortunately, parts of the private sector have not always kept pace with that, but one way for Government to make a difference, proposed by Disability Rights UK, is to ensure that businesses above a certain size monitor and publish data on the numbers of disabled people they employ. Many good employers do that already, but it would be a proportionate and effective way to improve access to work and would possibly help to tackle the direct and indirect discrimination that too many people who are disabled experience in the workplace.

The barriers to work for disabled people mean that the support that we offer through the social security system is all the more vital, but unfortunately the record of the last few years has been pretty abysmal in that regard, as we have heard, particularly in relation to the Work programme. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) pointed out, one third of disabled people in the UK live below the poverty line. That is about 3.7 million people. At a time of improvement in the labour market, the number of disabled people living in poverty actually increased last year. The shift from disability living allowance to personal independence payment has also meant that people with significant disabilities are losing eligibility for support. For many disabled people in low-paid jobs, such support enables them to stay in employment, so the clawback is counterproductive. Meanwhile, the Government’s plan to cut £30 a week from the support given to people in the work-related activity group—people who are not currently fit for work—is just vindictive.

This has been a timely debate, with substantial contributions on both sides. The Government are not doing enough to support disabled people’s access to employment, and I hope that Ministers will take on board the concerns raised today and bring forward the promised disability employment strategy as soon as possible.

I have a final request for the Minister. Will he reintroduce the “access to elected office” fund to enable more disabled people to enter political life? We have heard this afternoon that around one in five people in our society are disabled according to the definition in the Equality Act 2010, and it would be better if this place reflected that fact more accurately.

Universal Credit Work Allowance

Eilidh Whiteford Excerpts

Wednesday 6th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for calling me, and may I wish you and other Members of the House a good new year?

I begin by thanking the Opposition and the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) for tabling today’s motion, which the Scottish National party will be happy to support. However, today feels a wee bit like groundhog day, because, once again, we are here debating the adverse impact of the Government’s social security changes on people in low-paid work. Once again, SNP Members are asking why low-income families are being asked to pay the heaviest price for austerity. Why are low-paid workers, in particular, once again finding themselves on the front line?

A few weeks ago, when the Government were forced into their tax credits U-turn, I described it as a “stay of execution”, because it was quickly apparent that the sword of Damocles was still hanging over many of the low-paid households that were set to be hammered by tax credit cuts. It has been a short reprieve, because in April this year the reductions to the work allowance in universal credit are set to come into effect. They will hit many of the same low-income families who would have lost out under tax credits.

When universal credit was first introduced, early in the last Parliament, some lofty and rather extravagant claims were made for it, some of which we have heard reiterated today: universal credit was going to simplify and streamline our benefits system; it was going to be much more flexible, making it easier for people to move in and out of work, reflecting the reality of the modern labour market; and, above all, it was going to remove the benefit trap, by tackling the financial disincentives to entering the workforce. Instead, it was going not only to create better work incentives and make work pay, but to improve the incentives to move into better-paid work over time. Oh, it was a grand plan! The reality has been very different. I need not dwell too long today on the technical and management problems that have beset the universal credit project from its beginning, except to say that it has been subject to repeated and prolonged delays. It has had to be rebooted several times, and, even now, it is unlikely to be fully implemented until 2021 at the earliest.

Far more telling is how far the whole project of universal credit has strayed from its original objectives. The cornerstone of this ailing policy initiative was that it would improve work incentives and help tackle poverty, but that cornerstone has crumbled under the weight of a misconceived, ideologically driven and quite unnecessary austerity agenda, through which this Government have consistently chosen to penalise low-income families and make them pay a disproportionate price for the economic failures of past and present Governments. The thing is that by cutting the work allowance, the Government are cutting the very aspect of universal credit that creates a work incentive, so all the good progress that has been made is going to be undone very quickly after April.

[Angela Rayner]

Does the hon. Lady appreciate that one reason why I get so passionate about this issue, as do Members such as my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), is that we have previously been recipients of benefits, we have aspired to be able to do better things, and we now pay our taxes and are not on benefits? That is fantastic, but it happened because of a Labour Government. This Government are pulling that ladder up from under people who need and deserve that help.

[Dr Whiteford]

I am conscious of the fact that the hon. Lady represents one of the areas that has been at the forefront of the pilot scheme and I hope that I will have the opportunity later to address some of the issues raised there. She makes a valid point that the economic recession hit people very hard indeed, and the people who were hit the hardest were those already in vulnerable employment—those in the most insecure jobs. Unfortunately, recovery just has not given them the job security that they might have hoped for.

[Peter Heaton-Jones (North Devon) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making interesting points, but the facts do not quite support some of what she is saying. Is it not a fact that the universal credit system is incentivising people to get into work? The figures speak for themselves: 71% of universal credit claimants in the first nine months moved from welfare into work. It is working.

[Dr Whiteford]

The whole point that I am trying to make is that any progress that has been made will be undone if the Government remove the work incentive, which is the work allowance. It is the aspect of universal credit that makes it possible to earn more when they work. By cutting the work allowance, the Government are going to impose an eye-watering level of marginal taxation on people in low-paid jobs and make it harder than ever for those in low-income households to break out of the poverty trap. If the Government were serious about making work pay, if they were serious about boosting the UK’s productivity and if they actually wanted to help people get on, they would be increasing the work allowance, not reducing it. That would be a genuinely progressive measure, and it would actively help those in low-paid work.

[Chris Stephens]

Are not my hon. Friend’s arguments also supported by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which said in a report after the Budget that the cut to the work allowance

“weakens incentives for families to have someone in work”?

[Dr Whiteford]

Lots of think-tanks and non-governmental organisations have been queuing up to point out that this measure removes work incentives. It strikes me that increasing the work allowance would be a far more progressive measure than, for example, raising the personal tax allowance, which benefits higher-rate taxpayers such as ourselves far more than anyone in low-paid work.

The cuts to the universal credit work allowances are being introduced via the Universal Credit (Work Allowance) Amendment Regulations, which a Delegated Legislation Committee considered last November under the negative resolution procedure. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) opposed the cuts at the time, because it was clear to him, as it was to me, that reducing the amount that a household can earn before universal credit starts to be reduced would hurt low-income families in certain circumstances very badly indeed, and would remove work incentives for those households.

It causes me great concern that, instead of being fully debated here in the Chamber, the changes were enacted through delegated legislation without the scrutiny that their consequences merited. As far as I am aware, the Department for Work and Pensions has yet to produce a proper impact assessment of the changes to the work allowance, so we are very much dependent on external bodies for worked impact analyses. I would be grateful if Ministers said today that they will publish an impact assessment, particularly given that the Social Security Advisory Committee has expressed concerns about the adequacy of the evidence base for evaluating the changes. We can get up in this Chamber and spout as much hot air as we like, but if we lack the proper evidence or use the evidence so selectively to back up only our arguments, we really will fail the people who depend on the support of our social security system.

In late December, the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission said that

“the net impact of changes to universal credit...on work incentives is largely negative due to significant reductions in the generosity of work allowances.”

It pointed out that claimants who pay income tax will keep only 24 p in every extra pound they earn. They would need to earn an extra £210 a week to make up the losses from a reduced work allowance—a staggering rate of marginal taxation that makes a mockery of the notion that any work incentives will be left in universal credit. Incidentally, it is important to get away from the false idea, which has been creeping into today’s debate, that there are taxpayers and then there are people on benefit. Work allowances are for people who are working—the clue is in the name—in low-paid jobs.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

I have been listening carefully to the hon. Lady. She says that it is very important that the full data and the alternatives are exposed. Will she set out the cost implications of going down the route she would prefer, and explain how it would be affordable?

[Dr Whiteford]

I will happily do that. Before the general election, the Scottish National party set out in some detail its fully costed alternative to austerity. We were keen to point out that austerity is a choice. We can balance the books without austerity and release £140 billion for investment in public services. That would be a much fairer and more economically sensible way of doing business. I refer the hon. Gentleman to our manifesto.

[John Glen]

rose—

[Dr Whiteford]

I will not give way again. The hon. Gentleman might be interested to know that in our manifesto we proposed increasing work allowances by 20% to create the exact incentive that the Government say that they want to create while, at the same time, pulling out the rug from underneath it.

[John Glen]

rose—

[Dr Whiteford]

No, I will not give way again, because I want to make some progress. I may give way again a little later in my speech, but I am conscious of time.

The Commission on Social Mobility and Child Poverty also pointed out that a single parent working full-time on the minimum wage and receiving no help with housing costs would lose £50 a week. In what fantasy world does that amount to making work pay? Many parents who are working hard, and struggling to support themselves and their families, will find themselves substantially worse off.

There is enormous complexity around the impact of the cuts to the work allowance. There is a range of factors, including the number of adults in the household and whether or not housing costs are included. As has already been said, single parents and the self- employed are likely to be among those worst hit, but it really will depend on individual circumstances. However, the IFS points out that there will be more losers than winners under these changes, and the Resolution Foundation estimates that working families with children on universal credit will be, on average, £1,300 a year worse off by 2020. The IFS estimates that, overall, 2.6 million families across the UK will be worse off by an average of £1,600 a year. Let us not pretend any more—either to ourselves or to the public—that universal credit will create work incentives and tackle in-work poverty. It will not. For most of the people affected, it will make things worse.

[Heidi Allen]

rose—

[Dr Whiteford]

I will give way to the hon. Lady.

[Heidi Allen]

The hon. Lady is very kind. I am interested to know why more people find employment under the universal credit system than they did under the traditional method of jobseeker’s allowance.

[Dr Whiteford]

I have made that point already. We are talking about a change that is due to come in in April that will undercut work incentives. It will take the work incentive out of universal credit. The work allowance helps universal credit make work pay. It is the cornerstone of the system. If we take out that allowance, all we will have is another benefit trap like the one that it is trying to replace.

I wish to pick up on an issue raised by the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) earlier in the debate. In the Government’s response to the Social Security Advisory Committee’s “Occasional Paper 15” on universal credit, they said that they expect claimants to respond to cuts in the work allowance by “actively seeking more work.” From what we have already heard about the disincentives caused by high marginal rates of taxation, that is simply wishful thinking. The Secretary of State and Members on the Government Benches seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that people in low-paid jobs do not work as hard as people in highly paid jobs, and that somehow it is easy to pick up extra work—whether that is in the form of another wee job, or of more hours—but the reality is that low-paid jobs are often the most physically demanding, the most insecure, and the most exhausting.

Early yesterday morning, at the crack of dawn, when I was leaving Aberdeenshire, I passed roadworks where men were already trauchlin in the cold and the dark and the pouring rain—it has been raining incessantly—setting up their temporary traffic lights. Although they will not be on the minimum wage, they are certainly not high earners, and, doubtlessly, some of them will be part of families receiving tax credits or universal credit. I could not help but think how lucky I was to be able to work indoors at this time of year. Those manual workers are exactly the sort of folk who will be asked to find an additional job, or work extra hours after a long day outside.

[Owen Smith]

The hon. Lady is making an excellent speech. Does she agree that it is fundamentally offensive to those workers, and to all workers on a low wage, for the Secretary of State and his Ministers constantly to refer to the “dynamic” effects that will be introduced by this new system? Are these people who are working full time in the pouring rain undynamic?

[Dr Whiteford]

They were certainly showing a fair bit of dynamism yesterday morning. I was really glad that I did not have to work with them. I partly agree with the hon. Gentleman. The insecurity of the modern labour market means that people move in and out of part-time work more often that they did in the past. It is important that we create a system that responds to that. My problem is that the Government are undermining their own process with their transitional arrangements, but I will say more about that in a second or two.

There are people all over my constituency—and in everybody’s constituency—who work extremely hard already in low-paid, tiring and not exactly pleasant jobs that are neither interesting nor glamorous. They are often doing that while they are juggling family responsibilities, looking after children or, increasingly, elderly and infirm relatives. For many of them, taking on extra hours depends on that work not just being available, but being available at a time when they have access to childcare. Let us face it, young children cannot get themselves out to school in the morning. They may not be able to walk there safely on their own. They cannot just be left unattended at home for several hours after school or get their own tea. Many working parents have to juggle work and family commitments. Indeed, one reason why so many women are trapped in low-paid, low-skilled jobs, even when they have high-level skills and qualifications, is that they are the primary carer in their household and they are trying to fit work around their family responsibilities. The Catch-22, of course, is that it is a lot easier to do that juggling if they are in a well-paid job.

I have a very serious question for the Government that echoes the question posed by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West. Many of those who work in low-paid jobs in Government Departments, including in the DWP, receive tax credits or universal credit. Will their employer offer them a few wee extra hours to compensate them for the loss of their work allowance? Will the DWP specifically—I hope that Ministers can answer this one—offer extra hours to its own staff who are set to lose out, or will it impose in-work conditionality on them instead? If the Government cannot or will not commit today to supporting their own staff, they have no business putting the onus on other employers to miraculously conjure up extra work for people.

[James Cleverly (Braintree) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Dr Whiteford]

No—I have moved on, so I am going to keep making progress.

It is important that we understand that new claimants for universal credit will be significantly disadvantaged compared with those still claiming under the old tax credits regime. We have been told that there will be transitional protections for those being migrated from the old system to the new, but my understanding is that the transitional protections for existing claimants will evaporate if there is a significant change to their circumstances such as a new job, having a baby, or the breakdown of a relationship. The difference will be enormous. In the coming financial year, a one-earner couple with two children will take home nearly £800 a year more on the old tax credit system than they will if they have been moved on to universal credit. That is a huge disincentive to change one’s circumstances. People who are already on very tight budgets will be very reluctant to increase their hours or take a promotion if it might leave them worse off. Once again, this undermines work incentives, and it will make people reluctant to take promotion, change their hours, or move to a different employer. To come back to the point raised earlier, it will erode the dynamism of the system by which the Government have set such store today.

I think these disparities are going to cause real ill feeling in our communities. Co-workers who are doing the same job alongside each other, earning the same salary and living in similar family circumstances, could be receiving wildly differing levels of support. I do not know how the Government plan to sell that to people in low-paid work. I certainly would not want to have to try to justify it to my constituents; it is manifestly unfair. What is also deeply problematic is that some parts of the UK have been transitioning to universal credit before others, so there will inevitably be regional disparities in the areas where a higher proportion of claimants have been migrated. Why should people living in Hammersmith, Rugby, Inverness, Harrogate, Bath and Shotton—the areas where universal credit has been rolled out first—receive less support, on average, than those in the towns and cities that are last in the queue? The Government admit that at least 700,000 people will still be on the old system by the end of next year. That is a recipe for discontent among those who have served as the guinea pigs.

Cutting work allowances will not achieve the outcomes the Government claim. The way to reduce social security spending is to fix the economy—to create jobs and boost productivity. That reduces the need for spending on social security and raises tax receipts. We need to name the cuts to the work allowance as what they are—an assault on people in low-paid work as part of a failed, needless, ideologically driven austerity programme that has held back economic recovery and stifled productivity. The Government have made the wrong choice. They have a chance today to rethink these cuts, which will reduce work incentives and trap low-paid families in poverty. There is an alternative to austerity. Their short-sighted, counter-productive cutting of work allowances will hurt working people. I hope that the Conservative Members who expressed reservations about the tax credit proposals will understand that this cut will hit many of the same people in much the same way as they move on to universal credit, and that they will join us in the Lobby this afternoon.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Benefit Sanctions

Eilidh Whiteford Excerpts

Wednesday 16th December 2015 Westminster Hall

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered benefit sanctions.

I am very pleased to have the opportunity to lead this short debate this afternoon. Members will be aware that I have debated this topic with Ministers several times in the past, and that I have been at pains during those debates to raise concerns about the impact of conditionality on vulnerable claimants. At the forefront of those debates has been the disproportionate level of sanctions imposed on people with mental illness. I met the Under-Secretary of State for Disabled People not long ago to discuss some of the ways in which the Government might address the acknowledged shortcomings in the regime for those with serious mental illnesses and other fluctuating conditions. However, I am glad that the Minister for Employment is responding to today’s debate, because I think the wider issues sit far more appropriately in her portfolio.

As I have argued before, one of the reasons why the sanctions regime is failing vulnerable people so badly is the underlying problem with the work capability assessment. High levels of sanctioning among people who are ill or very disadvantaged is, in part, symptomatic of people being found fit for work when they are not really fit for work. Until that gets fixed, I fear we are destined to go round in circles. But that is not the whole story. Although I do not think anyone would dismiss the value of conditionality in the benefits system per se, the conditions that the Government set need to be proportionate and fair, and I do not think we can say that at the moment, particularly for the more vulnerable claimants.

The Government’s announcement a few weeks back that they intend to pilot a so-called yellow card scheme for sanctions in the new year is, I think, an acknowledgement that the system is not working very well at present. I hope the Minister will take the opportunity today to set out in more detail how that warning system will work in practice, and, specifically, what protection there will be for those who are identified as vulnerable.

My main call today echoes the calls I have made previously, and that the Work and Pensions Committee made in the previous Parliament, for a full independent review of the benefit sanctions regime. That is necessary and long overdue. I fear that tinkering around the edges of the system will not resolve the systemic weaknesses, and this afternoon I want to highlight a growing body of evidence that sanctions are not only failing to support claimants into work, but are actually having a counterproductive effect, undermining the Government’s policy objectives and causing unacceptable levels of hardship and destitution to vulnerable and disadvantaged people.

Last week the homelessness charity, Crisis, published a major piece of research undertaken at Sheffield Hallam University into homeless people’s experiences of welfare conditionality and benefit sanctions. It is a significant and timely piece of work; it is the largest study of its kind ever carried out, and it provides a robust qualitative evidence base for how sanctions are affecting vulnerable claimants. The researchers drew on the experiences of more than a thousand people who use homelessness services in England and Scotland, and looked specifically at the impact of sanctions on their lives and employment prospects. Distressing individual stories are documented in the report, and I urge the Minister and other hon. Members to read it. It deserves to be widely read.

There are many reasons why people become homeless or precariously housed. Often in the past, relationship breakdown has been cited as the single biggest reason why someone will end up homeless, but more recently that has been overtaken by problems with benefits, particularly among those who have been sanctioned. In many cases, though, homelessness is itself a symptom of underlying vulnerabilities. Young people leaving care; people with long-term mental health problems; people with addictions; and people with borderline learning disabilities who have trouble with literacy or numeracy—those are all high risk factors for becoming homeless, but what the Crisis research found was that the most vulnerable claimants were those at the greatest risk of being sanctioned. They also found that, far from pushing people to secure work, sanctions were actually pushing people further away from the labour market. To my mind, that is an extremely serious finding, because it undermines the Government’s assertion that sanctions are helping to bring down claimant numbers and are playing a positive role in getting people into work.

As far as vulnerable claimants are concerned, that is simply not where the evidence leads. Research from the University of Oxford and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, published earlier this year, found that

“Sanctions do not appear to help people return to work. There is a real concern that sanctioned persons are disappearing from view.”

Similarly, the Economic and Social Research Council has questioned the effectiveness of conditionality in getting people into work, and the Department for Work and Pensions’ own evaluation of Jobcentre Plus in 2013 concluded that there was no evidence to suggest that knowledge of jobseeker’s allowance conditionality led to actual movement into work. However, there is mounting evidence that sanctions are a key driver of the growth in demand for food banks and are causing unprecedented hardship, and now there is evidence that they are fuelling homelessness.

The number of people being sanctioned has fallen from its peak in the year to October 2013. Since that time, the labour market has improved significantly, and the number of people claiming jobseeker’s allowance or its successor benefit, universal credit, has fallen by 41%, so we would expect to see a corresponding fall in the number of people being sanctioned. What is more revealing is that we have also seen a smaller, underlying downward trend in the proportion of claimants being sanctioned, which has fallen to 4.92% a month in the year to June 2015, from a high of 6.77% a month in the previous year. That, however, is still dramatically higher than the pre-2012 rates prior to the introduction of the new regime, and a staggering proportion of sanctions—more than two thirds—are now overturned on appeal, where claimants challenge the decision. I know from speaking to colleagues in Citizens Advice that it now urges people who are sanctioned to appeal against that first sanction. If people do not appeal against that first sanction, there is a real risk that if they are sanctioned again, the consequences will be devastating for their incomes.

Research carried out by Dr David Webster of Glasgow University highlights a couple of very important statistical limitations of the data that we have on sanctions. First, the recorded stats show sanctions only after reviews, considerations and appeals, so there is a time lag in the data, and the figures do not tell us how many people actually had their benefit money stopped in the first place. Also, and more significantly, as the DWP has been making the transfer to universal credit, new single claimants of unemployment benefits are going on to that benefit instead of on to JSA, and absolutely no data have been published on universal credit sanctions. This is now having what researchers describe as a “significant distorting effect” on analysis, because the number of those at risk of JSA sanctions is being reduced. Moreover, the young single claimants now more likely to be on universal credit—almost half of them are under 25—were previously twice as likely, statistically, to be sanctioned under JSA, so the distortion in the data could be amplified by that, but without hard data, we simply do not know. So we need that data on universal credit.

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

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this debate. She has made an interesting point about jobseeker’s allowance, but there are data to show that in the past couple of years there has been a significant increase in the number of disabled people in receipt of employment and support allowance who have been sanctioned, up from 1,400 in March 2013 to 5,400 in March 2014, according to the Crisis figures that I believe the hon. Lady was citing.

The hon. Lady made comments about improving the work capability assessment. Even if the WCA were improved, what is her solution to the sanctions on disabled people on employment and support allowance?

[Mrs Cheryl Gillan (in the Chair)]

May I remind hon. Members that interventions are supposed to be short and pithy?

[Dr Whiteford]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point about employment and support allowance. I was particularly addressing the universal credit figures, on which, at the moment, the data are lacking, although I believe that in August the UK Statistics Authority called for those data to be published, along with data on actual numbers of sanctions applied. Will the Minister tell us when the Government plan to publish those figures?

The wider issue about the move to universal credit is that it introduces critical differences to the conditionality regime that applied for JSA. First, under universal credit, sanctions run consecutively, not concurrently, so they will potentially be much longer. Also, any hardship payments made are repayable, so if, for example, someone is repaying a hardship payment at the rate of 40% of their benefit, their sanction will effectively become three and a half times longer in real terms than its nominal length. That seems unduly punitive. Moreover, the 80% hardship rate for vulnerable claimants will be abolished under universal credit. Again, given what the Government have already said about recognising the needs of vulnerable claimants, they really should go back to the universal credit changes and look at how they are going to impact on people.

Hardship payments are not made automatically. People need to know that they exist, whether they are eligible for them, and how to apply. My hon. Friend the Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (Ms Ahmed-Sheikh) has introduced a ten-minute rule Bill, which we are due to debate early in the new year, that would make hardship payments automatic and non-repayable. In the wake of the Oakley review, the Government accepted in principle the need to: make hardship payments available from day one of a sanction; remove the requirement for those who are vulnerable or have children to complete a separate application process; and extend vulnerability markers. Given that acknowledgement that there are vulnerable people in the system, that people are being sanctioned who are not really in a position to comply with the conditions placed on them, and the growing evidence that those claimants are at much greater risk of sanctioning, will the Minister look at this again as universal credit is rolled out more widely?

The rate of sanctions for those in receipt of ESA is very much lower than for JSA, but it is nevertheless a serious issue. We would expect ESA sanctions to be less prevalent, but one of the deeply worrying issues that emerges from the figures released by the DWP in November is that around half of the ESA sanctions imposed between April and June this year were on claimants who had previously been sanctioned. That makes it crystal clear that sanctions are not having a deterrent effect on sick and disabled claimants; rather, it suggests that people are simply unable to comply with the conditions imposed on them. That echoes case studies in the Crisis research, which showed that when sanctioned claimants on ESA had support from professionals, they were subsequently assigned to the support group.

One of the key issues that emerged from the Crisis research with service users was that overall, 21% of respondents who had been sanctioned said that they became homeless as a result of the sanction. The Government have to take that extremely seriously. If someone becomes homeless, it becomes significantly more difficult for them to find work. Communication becomes difficult if someone does not have a stable address, reliable internet access, and cannot present themselves in a smart and work-ready way. It also puts untold pressure on relationships with family and friends. Indeed, it puts financial pressure on family and friends who are trying to support loved ones but might not have the means to do so. It also has a very costly knock-on effect on local authorities, which have statutory responsibilities in such circumstances but also face significant financial pressures.

A critical and perennial problem is that sometimes when a person is sanctioned their housing benefit is also stopped. I know that it is not supposed to happen, and the Government claim that it no longer happens, but very recent research makes it clear that it is still happening. The issue was highlighted in the Oakley review back in 2014, and the Government responded by advising claimants to keep local authorities informed of their situation. They also said that they would implement an IT fix. When the previous Employment Minister appeared before the Work and Pensions Committee in February, prior to the election, it was suggested that the problem had been resolved, but it had not. In early October, DWP issued an urgent circular to local authorities confirming that sanctioned claimants should continue to receive housing benefits without interruption.

It is clear that there has been an ongoing problem that has not been resolved. That is backed up by the evidence in the Crisis report: more than a third of those it surveyed who claim housing benefit reported that it was stopped when they were sanctioned. That rate rose to 38% for those in the ESA work-related activity group—that is, those people currently not fit for work and in an inherently vulnerable situation. It is clear that not all councils’ systems have caught up with the new guidance yet, and it is still a bit of a lottery. This has been happening for a long time now, and the Government really need to get a grip of the issue. Will the Minister update us on that, and tell us what the Government are going to do to protect vulnerable claimants who face housing benefit cuts?

It is important to understand that for many people in rented accommodation, housing benefit or local housing allowance will not cover all their rent in the first place. Many people in private rented accommodation make up the rent out of their JSA or ESA, and some folk in social housing will be liable for the bedroom tax—although thankfully not in Scotland. In a lot of cases, sanctioning is pushing people into arrears, even where the system is working as the Government intend it to.

It is abundantly clear that the sanctions regime is causing real hardship for the most vulnerable people. The Crisis report lays out in very stark terms the extent to which some claimants find it immensely difficult to comply with the conditions placed on them. It is really notable in the research findings that the overwhelming majority of claimants want to work and have every intention of meeting their responsibilities, but simply cannot always meet the demands placed on them. Sanctions need to be reasonable, proportionate and fair, but for those who face the biggest hurdles, the current regime is none of those things.

No one should be made destitute because of the conditionality regime. That is not an acceptable outcome in a civilised and wealthy society. Neither is it a proportionate response to minor infringements, which are often the result of circumstances beyond the control of individuals. Only one in 50 people who are sanctioned is sanctioned for refusing a job. That seems like a heavy burden for people who have made minor infringements. They can potentially lose their homes and any means of supporting themselves. All Members know that we are witnessing destitution in too many communities. People are simply falling through the safety net, and at this stage we have no way of quantifying how many people simply fall out of the system altogether. I have seen them in my constituency, and they tend to be sick people who have long-term health conditions, but we have no systematic information. It is clear that we need a root-and-branch review of the sanctions regime and, as a matter of urgency, we need hardship payments to ensure an accessible safety net.

I am really conscious that it has been a balmy 12° to 15° here in London over the past few days, but I left Aberdeenshire this weekend in sub-zero temperatures. As winter sets in, those who cannot stay warm and cannot feed themselves properly are at the gravest risk. The Government are culpable if they do not protect our most vulnerable citizens. I urge them to listen and to respond to the specific points I have made. I thank the Members who have come to contribute to this very important debate so close to the end of term.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Whiteford]

Thank you, Mrs Gillan. I am glad to have the opportunity to sum up what has been a very wide-ranging debate, but nevertheless, the questions that have been posed in this debate have been very focused. They have been put repeatedly to this “Conservatist” Government, because they need answering. They were posed by the Work and Pensions Committee in the previous Parliament on more than one occasion, and some were posed in the Oakley review. Most of the questions relate to the impact of conditionality on the most vulnerable claimants, because there is mounting evidence that the sanctions regime is hitting those people disproportionately and that the measures that have been taken are not going far enough to mitigate the impact on people who should definitely not be sanctioned.

[Sir Roger Gale in the Chair]

We have heard powerful speeches this afternoon from my hon. Friends the Members for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin), for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) and for Airdrie and Shotts (Neil Gray), and indeed from the Labour Front Bencher, the hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry). There is clearly a case to answer, because the detrimental impact of sanctions on the mental health and material wellbeing of people in the benefit system, particularly those in receipt of jobseeker’s allowance and employment and support allowance, is giving huge cause for concern across all our constituencies.

My constituency has one of the highest rates of sanctions in the UK, despite having one of the lowest rates of unemployment. I can only attribute that high rate to our rurality, the very poor and costly internet access, the limited transport links that people have, and the large numbers of people in seasonal, part-time and casual jobs. However, the questions that have been put to the Minister have come from right across these islands. They are about why people are using food banks in the 21st century, why people are being found fit for work when they are clearly not, and why the system is not providing a safety net.

I am glad that the Minister was able to give a bit more detail today about how the so-called yellow card system will work in practice, but is Scotland just one big constituency now? Which bits of Scotland will it work in? How will that be reported? How will that come back to this House? We still do not know the structure of that scheme, and we need to know.

My most important questions today were about how the conditionality regime becomes worse for the people on the receiving end of it under universal credit. The Minister did not touch on those questions at all, or on my questions about hardship payments. Instead she simply reiterated points that were made in the written statement—we know those; we have got that information. What we are looking for is more information about how the measures are going to be rolled out in practice.

I was also a bit surprised when the Minister mentioned the Scotland Bill, given that her Government voted down the amendments that we put to the Scotland Bill that would have devolved responsibility for these matters. I know that the Scottish Government have been committing £100 million a year to mitigate the impact of what is happening and to mop up the mess that the Government have created. Buried in the Blue Book, however, were some small lines about how the Work programme is to be cut drastically before it is devolved. That will significantly limit the amount of action that the Scottish Government can take. A set of powers are being devolved that are going to disappear before we get them.

I know that my staff in my constituency office work closely with very hard-working advisers in our benefits offices. I have paid tribute to them in this House before. They hear it and know that we appreciate what they do and the support that they give—

[Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)]

Order.

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).

Oral Answers to Questions

Eilidh Whiteford Excerpts

Monday 7th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

By the way, I welcome the hon. Gentleman back. It is good to see him back in his place; I understand he has had some difficulties with health treatments.

The hon. Gentleman would be right, if that were the trend and the direction in which we were going. It is interesting that there is a difference between us and the United States. The vast majority of the jobs that have been created here are white-collar and full-time. That is important. Although we think that people being self-employed is excellent for those who choose to do it, we are seeing a huge trend in supported jobs with full pay and full-time work.

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

The selling point of the Government’s universal credit scheme was that it was supposed to increase work incentives. However, the reduction in work allowances in universal credit due to take effect in April next year will leave around 35,000 working households with no transitional protection and thousands of pounds worse off. Does the Secretary of State accept that these changes will actively disincentivise people to go into work, particularly lone parents?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I do not. Universal credit is acting as a huge incentive to go back to work. Even the statistics published over the weekend show that universal credit means that people are 8% more likely to go into work than was the case with jobseeker’s allowance. I remind the hon. Lady that jobseeker’s allowance has been seen by many in the western world as one of the most successful back-to-work benefits. Universal credit performs even better than jobseeker’s allowance by some considerable degree.

[Dr Whiteford]

With respect, the Secretary of State did not answer the question about the 35,000 households and about transitional relief coming into effect for April 2016, so I ask him again: what about those people who stand to be thousands of pounds worse off in April?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

As I said before, first, people are getting back to work. Secondly, those who are on universal credit at present will be fully supported through the flexible support fund, which will provide all the resources necessary to ensure that their situation remains exactly the same as it is today.