Welfare Benefit Changes

Debate between Emily Thornberry and Eilidh Whiteford

Wednesday 14th October 2015 Westminster Hall

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

I thank you for calling me a second time, Mr Pritchard. I am pleased to take part in this afternoon’s wide-ranging debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) on bringing the issues forward so eloquently. The debate has, however, presented a sorry picture of the impact of the Government’s welfare reforms across the UK. Above all, it has brought home the point that austerity is not working; the Government are simply attacking low-income families, disabled people and those with long-term health conditions, while giving tax breaks to the very wealthiest.

We have heard today that children will be among those most severely impacted by the changes to tax credits in the new Welfare Reform and Work Bill, currently undergoing legislative scrutiny, but it is important to understand that the new measures are only the latest in a long line of assaults on the most disadvantaged people in our society.

Research on the cumulative impact of the reforms that have already been enacted, published by Sheffield Hallam University in February this year, calculated that by 2018 incomes in Scotland will have been reduced by £1.5 billion a year, or £440 for every adult of working age. According to the House of Commons Library, the current round of reforms in the Welfare Reform and Work Bill will take an estimated further £900 million a year from the lowest income households, and the heaviest losses will be sustained by families with children. As my hon. Friend the Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) said so powerfully, child poverty has long-term consequences. It cannot be fixed some years later with a magic bullet; it has a long-term impact on people’s life chances and life expectancy.

In Scotland, almost 200,000 families and 346,000 children are going to lose out because of changes to tax credits. The Resolution Foundation has pointed out that the vast majority of those children live in working families, and it expects that across the UK the changes to tax credits alone are going to push 200,000 more children into poverty by 2016, rising to 300,000 by 2020. Far from making work pay, the changes to tax credits for people already on low wages are going to entrench in-work poverty, not address it.

It is important to remember that the welfare reforms that have been implemented are having a hugely detrimental impact on thousands of people already hit by earlier reforms. We are seeing some of those effects much more clearly than we have until now—certainly more than we did at the time of their implementation.

Arguably, the most distressing symptom of the failure of welfare reform is the explosion of food bank use right across these islands. In Scotland, food bank use rose by two thirds last year alone. The Trussell Trust distributed 36,000 food parcels to children in Scotland, and that represents only some of the food banks operating in our communities. I do not think that is a sufficient or acceptable safety net for children in 21st-century Scotland —frankly, I do not know how Ministers sleep at night. It is very telling that not a single Back-Bench Tory MP is here today to defend the Government’s record. That is shameful.

The two biggest drivers for the unprecedented growth in food bank use are the changes in support for disabled people and those with long-term health problems, and, connected to that, the changes to the conditionality regime. For years now, serious concerns have repeatedly been raised about the work capability assessment for employment and support allowance. It has been an utter shambles.

According to the DWP’s own recent statistical analysis, over half of appealed fit-for-work ESA decisions are overturned. That is an unsustainable and unacceptable level of poor decision making. Moreover, it has led to protracted and costly appeal and tribunal proceedings—processes that place enormous stress on and cause real hardship to sick and disabled people and those who care for them. In some cases, they have exacerbated people’s health conditions.

The story with personal independence payments is similar, as my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) pointed out. A number of my constituents waited nearly a year for a PIP assessment, and so far, 20% of mandatory reconsiderations of PIP have resulted in a different decision being made. Under the previous contractor, Atos, the Government spent around £60 million a year on around 600,000 appeals against Atos decisions. A new contractor is now in place, but unless the Government actually change what they ask these companies to assess, and how, it is hard to see how Maximus is going to do any better than its predecessor.

A key problem has been that the complex medical histories of some claimants have not been consistently sought or considered adequately in a process that has been focused on functionality.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

Given that the hon. Lady is on this point, I should briefly highlight that when there was a movement from the disability living allowance to the personal independence payment, there were instructions out that the Government expected 20% fewer people to be on PIP.

[Dr Whiteford]

The hon. Lady makes an important point. Those people still have those conditions to live with, in many cases, and their condition has not got any better. It is just that it has become more difficult for them to deal with their condition. The problem has been particularly acute for people with fluctuating conditions and mental health problems—illnesses that are perhaps not immediately visible. The Multiple Sclerosis Society has pointed out that 39% of its members who were surveyed said that their ESA assessments had not taken account of additional evidence.

I have raised this issue with Ministers many times, particularly in relation to mental health. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) rightly raised the tragic case of Michael O’Sullivan, following a ruling by the coroner concluding that a decision made in relation to his ESA was a major factor in his death. This man committed suicide after having been found fit for work by the Government’s assessors in 2013, but sadly this is not an isolated case.

Some time ago, I raised the case of a woman known as Ms DE, whose suicide in 2011 was the subject of an investigation by the Mental Welfare Commission for Scotland. Ms DE took her own life after scoring zero points in a work capability assessment made in the absence of an ESA50 form and without any additional information from her clinicians. The only information her assessor had about her condition was a single word, “depression”, which in her case masked a long and very complicated psychiatric history. Both her general practitioner and her consultant psychiatrist considered her unfit for work at the time of her death, even though she had worked for most of her adult life and wanted to go back to work. The distress caused by her benefits assessment may have played a role in her suicide. The investigation concluded that there was “no other known trigger” for the events that took place.

Those two cases have been properly investigated and fully documented, but they are unlikely to be isolated. I have had to learn to deal with constituents coming to me expressing suicidal feelings because of their experiences in the assessment process, and I am certainly not qualified to give them the kind of support that they clearly need. As an MP, all I can really do is point them in the direction of the appropriate services and try to help them to work their way through state bureaucracy. However, just at a human level, I do not think anyone can fail to be moved or to understand that we have a fundamental problem in this process. It is not treating people with the basic dignity that they require.

The shortcomings of the assessment system are leading directly to the problems experienced with the new sanctions regime. There has been considerable evidence for some time now that, for example, those with mental health conditions are being disproportionately sanctioned. Again, that chimes with the anecdotal evidence that I am sure many MPs here today will have seen at first hand—of very unwell people simply falling through the social safety net.

Recent figures published by the DWP on the sanctions regime show that in nearly 50% of reviewed cases, decisions are being reversed. We see a system that is not working efficiently, and again, we see horrendous social consequences for people who are ill and, in some cases, really very vulnerable. Once again, taking better account of individuals’ medical histories and getting the decisions right in the first place would prevent the stress, hardship and anxiety of sick and vulnerable people falling foul of the sanctions regime and finding themselves stigmatised, vilified and castigated simply for being unwell.

We need a root-and-branch review of the sanctions regime. In the last Parliament, the cross-party Work and Pensions Committee recognised that, as have countless external bodies representing those living with health problems. Will the Minister today please just bite the bullet, go back to the drawing board on the sanctions regime and recognise the links to the inadequacies in the assessment process?

I have already talked about the Government Benches; when I look around the Chamber, I am also struck by the number of Members who have spoken from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland this afternoon. I think that reflects the differential impact that welfare reform is having on the devolved Administrations. I also think it probably reflects a very different political ethos, but we will leave that for another day.

The Scottish Government have tried to protect those most affected by welfare reforms, providing over £300 million to mitigate the worst excesses of the changes; notably, that has mitigated the bedroom tax, maintained council tax benefit for half a million people and established the welfare fund. However, what we really need are economic powers and the powers over social security fully in the hands of our Parliament so that we can tackle the causes, not just the symptoms, of poverty and disadvantage.

I am sorry that so far the Government have voted against any moves to devolve really meaningful powers, betraying the promises made just over a year ago, but I hope that when we do have chance very shortly to debate these matters again, the Government will take the opportunity to accept some amendments that have been proposed, if only to reverse the damage that is going to be done to poor households through changes to tax credits.

The Government’s welfare reforms have bitten very deep already into the incomes of very poor people. It is important to remember that this Parliament has a responsibility to all its citizens—not just the rich people and those old enough to vote. We have to make sure that we do not abandon those people, because we have a responsibility to them, and we need a fairer social security system.

Equal Pay

Debate between Emily Thornberry and Eilidh Whiteford

Wednesday 18th March 2015 Westminster Hall

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

It is a particular pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Weir. I congratulate the hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) not only on securing the debate but on setting out the case so clearly and persuasively for reform of the Equal Pay Act 1970. I support, in principle, the call for the 1970 Act to be brought up to date and into line with the needs of our society, our economy and our labour market in the 21st century. I am disappointed that only women MPs have shown up for today’s debate. Is it not shocking that there is not a single Government Back Bencher here for such an economically and structurally important debate? The subject of our debate impacts on all our lives and on the lives of men, because they also have to deal with the consequences of unequal pay.

The Equal Pay Act 1970 was introduced the year after I was born. Although women’s participation in the labour market has been transformed in the intervening 45 years, the pay gap remains stubbornly entrenched. Progress has been painfully slow, and even women of my generation, who expected to be the second generation of women to experience equal pay, still find that, on average, our pay falls significantly behind that of our male counterparts.

I want to say a few words about Scotland. Although compared with other parts of the UK, we have had higher rates of women’s participation in the labour market, consistently lower women’s unemployment and higher women’s employment over the past few years, our pay gap appears to be slightly wider. There are different ways of measuring that gap, but according to the Close the Gap campaign, provisional figures for 2014 indicate an 11.5% pay gap in the hourly rate for full-time workers, and a massive 32.4% pay gap between the hourly rate of women working part time and men working full time. Women working part time are earning almost a third less. Given that 78% of part-time workers in Scotland are women, the gap will have a long-term impact on women during their working lives and in retirement, when they are likely to have far lower pensions than men and to be far more susceptible to poverty in old age.

I take this opportunity to pay tribute to the Close the Gap campaign, which is doing much to lobby on equal pay in Scotland. I also pay tribute to Engender and the Scottish Women’s Budget Group, which provide a lot of research and analysis that informs not only the raising of awareness but action to tackle the problems caused by unequal pay. At the moment, on average, a woman in 21st-century Scotland earns £95.60 a week less than a man. As we know, a significant part of the problem is occupational segregation. Women are over-represented in jobs that tend to be low paid, as the hon. Lady has said, such as cleaning, caring, clerical work, catering and retail jobs. It is also significant that in Scotland, according to Close the Gap, 48% of women work in public administration, education and health.

Women represent more than half of workers in only six of the 20 standardised industry classifications, whereas men tend to be more evenly spread across industry groups. Some 80% of administrative and secretarial workers and those in personal service jobs are women. Women are more likely to work in the public sector: 67% of local government workers and 81% of NHS workers, but only a third of chief executives, are women. We know that 97% of child care and early years education staff are women, and 98% of classroom assistants. By contrast, less than 3% of chartered civil engineers in Scotland are women. I have been working hard with my local college and schools to try to change that, and some of the local companies that recruit people with STEM qualifications are keen to encourage such change. We are making progress with getting girls into engineering, but it is a long-term challenge.

The hon. Lady has alluded to the fact that the vertical distribution of pay in organisations often betrays a gendered division of labour. Higher-paid jobs are predominantly done by men, and lower-paid ones tend to be done by women. It is disappointing that efforts to encourage companies voluntarily to audit their pay structures by gender have had such derisorily poor uptake, especially when companies that have done so have changed their policies and practices as a result and become a lot more aware of their own institutional biases.

The hon. Lady made the point at length that it has become much more difficult for women to seek redress if they believe that they are being discriminated against in the workplace. A core underlying factor in the pay gap is the fact that caring for young children and frail, elderly, sick or disabled relatives still falls predominantly to women. It is often perceived to be a woman’s duty to step up at times of family crisis or illness. Consequently, too many women—mothers and unpaid carers—take jobs that they can juggle around their caring responsibilities. Too often, that means part-time, low-paid, insecure and low-skilled work, sometimes on zero-hours contracts, even when those women have the skills, experience and qualifications to take on much higher levels of responsibility. That is a huge waste of human and economic potential, and it costs our economy dear.

I do not mean in any way to undervalue the choices that people make to prioritise their family; I am merely reflecting the lack of choice and flexibility that women have when they are trying to establish a balance between their working lives and their home lives. Our workplaces and our legislation—indeed, our legislative system, although I will not say too much about the House of Commons today—have not kept up with changes in our society and with the aspirations of both women and men to earn a living and have a life. We need to take much more account of the impact of care in our economic models.

A step change in access to child care is as important as other legislative measures to tackle unequal pay. The cost of child care is simply prohibitive for far too many people, especially when it is combined with the cost of commuting to and from work. It acts as a huge disincentive to mothers who are keen to be in the workplace, and who want to work and use their skills and qualifications, but who cannot do so because they cannot earn enough to pay for child care and commuting. That problem gets even worse during school holidays, when many parents find that they are effectively working for nothing because they have to pay for very expensive child care over the holiday period. Sometimes, they have difficulty arranging any suitable child care at all during the summer months. That is helping to entrench occupational segregation, and it is driving the casualisation of employment.

Many things can be said about this issue, and I do not intend to make a long contribution, but introducing free access to child care and increasing the hours of child care to which parents are entitled goes much further than simply introducing tax breaks on child care, which tend to help women in higher-paid occupations, but which do nothing for the millions of women who top up their low pay with tax credits and who are already struggling to make ends meet.

In recent times, we have seen evidence that the pay gap is closing for younger women. Obviously, that is to be welcomed, but we should not be too congratulatory or pretend that the problem has been solved, because such developments are not really a sustainable solution. We need to think much more long term about how those women will fare in later years. If the only way for women to close the gender pay gap is not to have, or to delay having, children, that is simply not sustainable in terms of our demographics.

We therefore need to look at flexible working and at protecting women’s rights in the workplace. I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady that we need to bring the Equal Pay Act 1970 into the 21st century.

[Emily Thornberry]

Has the hon. Lady, like me, met young women beginning their careers who believe they will always be paid equally with men? When I point out that they would face an increasing gap with their contemporaries if they had children and tried to go back into work, they look at me as if I had two heads. They simply do not believe that that can happen, but we all know it does.

[Dr Whiteford]

It is interesting, and I have seen it in my own generation. When I was young and fresh-faced, I came out of university keen to build a career. If anybody had told me then that I would be disadvantaged in the labour market, I would probably have laughed at them. However, women find out the truth very quickly; indeed, that happens when they are first appointed to their jobs—in my day, there was still a big gap in starting salaries. There is also the issue of how they negotiate pay increases as they go through their careers. It is therefore difficult for young women to keep pace with their peer group.

It does not matter how hard they work, how committed they are or whether they have children; the pay gap persists for women who do not have children, as well as for those who do. This is not just as simple as whether a woman has a family. The layers of discrimination are often very subtle, and they have to do with the cultural dynamics in organisations and the vertical integration the hon. Lady and I have talked about.

Audits within organisations are therefore important, because they can expose to personnel departments their unconscious biases in offering different starting salaries to men and women and in looking at people’s investment in their careers and career progression. The hon. Lady therefore makes a good point, and I would absolutely encourage young women to be assertive in the workplace and to chase the careers they want. As a society, however, we cannot let that happen at the expense of the work-life balance, and it must be possible for women to pursue careers in a sustainable way, without burning the candle at both ends, and then some. At the same time, it cannot just be women who take responsibility for work-life balance. However, I was just winding up when the hon. Lady intervened, so I will do so now and hand the floor to other contributors.