Funeral Poverty

Emma Lewell Excerpts

Tuesday 13th October 2015 Westminster Hall

[Paul Maynard]

My hon. Friend is right. None of us really wants to think about what we will do when the reality presents itself to us and we have a funeral to organise. Not only do we have to process the emotions that we inevitably feel, but there is an entire series of practical steps that have to be gone through that we are probably not best placed to go through at that time. We are not acting as the informed consumer that we might be if we were going down the supermarket to make a normal purchase. This cannot be the normal purchase that we might like it to be.

The experience can be overwhelming at times and many people require a degree of practical help in trying to navigate the process. For some, yes, the need to organise might be a welcome distraction from the process of grieving, but I do not think it can ever be accepted that these things will just happen of their own accord. As Marie Curie points out, there can be quite an adverse consequence for the grieving process if the result is not the right one in the end. Above all else, the cost of a funeral can be a massive shock to the budgets of families who perhaps do not start off with a significant amount of resilience in the first place.

The fact that I organised today’s debate seems to have provoked a number of insurance companies into rushing out annual reports a few weeks early. Both Royal London and SunLife had to get a move on down the printers, and Royal London’s report, which came out on 5 October, showed once again that funeral costs continue to rise. It now estimates that about one in 10 people are struggling to meet the cost of a funeral. The other provider, SunLife, in its “Cost of Dying” report, which came out even more recently—this weekend—found that the cost of a basic funeral had risen to £3,693, with a further £2,000 spent on discretionary items such as extra limousines, venue hire and catering. That is a sizeable sum, which, if not met out of the deceased’s estate, will place a substantial burden on the family if they have few savings yet need to find the money for a deposit even to start the process. No wonder research shows that credit cards and funerals are two of the items that we most commonly find together.

For those whose financial resilience is low to begin with, the phenomenon of funeral poverty almost has a sad inevitability about it. It leaves people facing a scale of debt and a suddenness that they simply cannot be expected to prepare for, so I think that it is right and proper that we look today in particular at what the Government’s tools are for trying to deal with the problem.

The main one is the social fund funeral payment, which has been in existence since 1988. It combines an uncapped commitment to “necessary” costs such as burial and cremation fees, along with a capped amount of £700 to cover such items as the coffin, the memorial and funeral directors’ fee. With an average award of £1,347, it undoubtedly makes an important contribution to the costs of a funeral for those who receive a qualifying benefit and where no other family member can meet the bill.

It should be made clear that the benefit is designed not to pay the full amount of the funeral costs, but to make a contribution. That is the policy objective. It is worth assessing whether the benefit functions as it should against that policy objective. I am sure that we could all express views on whether it should achieve other objectives, and there might well be a debate to be had on that matter, but I want to assess the benefit against that particular objective to start with.

It is worth noting that within the average figures, there is a broad discrepancy. The discrepancy between the cost of a burial versus a cremation leads to some perverse outcomes. The amount that an individual gets will depend on which they opt for and where they are in the country. There is no inherent, internal logic in the amount that an individual will get when they are faced with meeting these bills.

The capping of additional costs at £700 has been controversial for quite a while. I first got involved with this topic when the NAFD came to see me about it. I understand why it is a complex issue. Some suggest that over time the value of the £700 has been eroded. Mathematically, that cannot be argued against. Inflation means that if we were paying that £700 now, based on the amount that it started out at when capping first took place in 2003, it would be slightly over £1,000. Perhaps the best way to think about this is not to argue whether it is too high or too low, but to look at the costs that it is designed to meet.

We have a very poor understanding of where the money from the social fund funeral payment is actually going. We understand where the capped amount—the £700—goes. It does not meet all the additional costs, many of which are discretionary and at the choice of the consumer, but the Government—rightly, in my view—seek to meet all the necessary costs, which relate to the legal requirement regarding the disposal of someone’s remains. It is right and proper that the Government should meet all those costs, and they recognise that. There can be no model in which all the necessary costs are not met.

However, despite five years of trying to achieve that—without any luck—it is very hard to track through the Department for Work and Pensions where those necessary costs are going. Different local authorities charge different fees for cremation and burial. There is no consistency across the country. There are some perverse factors, such as the growth of private crematoriums driving up local authority crematorium costs as well. I have asked on a number of occasions, as other hon. Members have, for more information on what the money is going on. It makes it very difficult, I think, for both the Department and interested observers to make an accurate assessment of whether the benefit is performing adequately and reaching its policy objective. We need to understand what the cost drivers are, and it is important that the Government try to work out what more they can do to improve the data collection. I would be interested to know what steps the Minister thinks that he can take to improve the data collection to allow that analysis to take place.

There are various anecdotal reports that not every council runs its crematoria on a cost-recovery basis. If some are seeking to cross-subsidise, that ought to be at least transparent to the Government; that might help them to understand how the overall amount spent remains roughly the same at some £46 million each succeeding year, while the proportion spent on necessary costs continues to fluctuate. The Government need a better understanding of what is going on.

Many have argued that a relatively straightforward step in the right direction would be to index-link the capped payment—the £700—to inflation. When I put that to the Minister’s predecessor, Mr Webb, he replied:

“One risk of index-linking these payments is that prices would rise and recipients would be no better off”.

I have interrogated that statement from as many logical positions as I possibly can, and I still cannot make head or tail of it. I do not think it relates to the reality faced by funeral directors or consumers. Although I recognise that there is a need for much greater transparency on the part of funeral directors when it comes to offering itemised estimates without having been asked to do so, to my mind a £700 cap leads to some perverse outcomes. Increasing numbers of funeral directors carry a substantial amount of debt because they have to act as debt managers, and that leads some of the larger chains to turn people away when it becomes clear that they may require some social fund payments to pay for the funeral.

I ask the Government once again to look at index-linking—not merely as a spending commitment, but to help them better understand the cost drivers from local Government and to use whatever savings they achieve to pay for the index-linking that would allow funeral directors to cover more of their costs. That would also give the Government an opportunity to look at saying to funeral directors, “Right. We have index-linked, so now let us look at how the industry can improve its delivery of services and act in consumers’ interests to get a fair outcome.”

I ask the Government to consider balancing the need to fund necessary costs with the need to ensure that those costs are constrained on the part of local councils—there can be no blank cheques—and that additional costs are not squeezed merely to ensure the funding of necessary costs, of which we do not have a full and proper understanding. There is a danger that, as debate on and public interest in the subject grow, we may get some perverse demands for change that will not lead to any improvement in the experience of the bereaved. We need robust, coherent data to judge the right way forward, and at the moment we do not have that information. Many observers in the sector strongly believe that to be true.

We also need to look at how the benefit works. From my time on the Work and Pensions Committee, I know that it is important to be quite forensic on each individual benefit. What is its policy objective? Is it delivering that objective? How is it being managed? With some 51,000 applications for the social fund funeral payment, some 41% of which were rejected, I wonder what scope there is to improve the pre-eligibility scrutiny of those applications, because 41% is quite a large number. I suspect that many will be quite transparently not eligible at an early stage.

There have been numerous meetings about how to improve the process, but we still seem to get roughly the same number of rejections. I would welcome the Minister’s view on what more could be done to improve that. The bereaved should not be left disappointed by going through the process of arranging the funeral, only to be rejected later. That can be quite devastating, and it causes many of the financial problems that I have mentioned. In turn, it leaves the funeral directors out of pocket, and they have to chase the debt.

Will the Minister address the situation of people who are awaiting a decision on a qualifying benefit? They are trapped in two DWP holding circles: a decision on their own benefit, which will have consequences for their entitlement to the social fund funeral payment. The form is very complex. Virtually every Work and Pensions Committee report that I have been involved with asks the Department to improve the layout of the form and to subject it to the test of the behavioural insights team. No DWP form can ever not be improved, and I think that this particular form would defeat even me if I tried to fill it in.

The timeliness of decision making matters. The Department’s performance on that is quite good; its target is 16 days, and it seems to fluctuate between 17 and 18 days, so it is not that far off—I can think of many other examples of where it is nowhere near its targets. Although that represents quite good performance, the target of 16 days is actually three days longer than the average time between a death and a funeral. Timeliness of decision making is still an issue, and it might be improved by a pre-application eligibility procedure, if such a thing could be introduced.

I would welcome the opportunity for relatives to know before they commission a funeral the scale of resources that they are likely to have at their disposal. Some relatives may feel that the measure of their grief and loss can somehow be proportionate to the complexity of the funeral that they commission, and although I understand why that is the case, it would be helpful for people to have a clear understanding from funeral directors at a very early stage about what the items on the bill will cost. It would help for them to know how much will be spent on each element and which elements were required, which were discretionary and which were optional. At the moment, people are not acting as informed consumers. Affordability works both ways, because if a funeral director offers a more affordable plan to the customer, they are more likely to get their money in the end. Both parties can benefit from that, and it would alleviate the levels of debt.

One interesting element of the debate is budgeting loans. Steve Webb participated in a debate on this subject a few years ago, in which he talked about budgeting loans being a solution to much of the problem. Despite repeated efforts by the NAFD to get more information out of the Department through freedom of information requests, no one seems to have evidence of any budgeting loan being taken out for the purpose of paying for a funeral. I would be interested to know whether there is any evidence that that is actually happening, because we do not have any data on it.

I will try to wrap up rapidly, because I am running out of time. I have been struck by the calls for regulation of the industry. I recognise that it is tempting to say that there should be a much greater state role, but I do not think that we have exhausted the good will of the industry. Quaker Social Action runs its fair funerals pledge, and many funeral directors are signing up to it, particularly from the younger end of the industry—the insurgents. That disruptive influence on the industry, focusing on what the consumers actually need, can only be a good thing. I am not entirely clear that the industry needs to be castigated. I know many of my local funeral directors, and they are compassionate, caring people who want to do the best on behalf of their community. I am sure that that is true in all our constituencies.

At the heart of the matter is the fact that no one goes into the process with a clear understanding of what costs they should reasonably expect. No one knows what a cheap funeral looks like versus an expensive funeral; one is merely presented with a bill at the end. It is difficult to understand how the component parts of that bill have been assembled, and, emotionally, one is probably not in a position to interrogate it. That can make it difficult to be an informed consumer, and it suggests to me that the market is not fully formed. It is hard to regulate a market that is not acting like one, and in which consumers are not making informed decisions at the point of purchase.

I support Quaker Social Action’s call for some sort of non-governmental third-party ombudsman role. When Steve Webb discussed the matter a few years ago, he talked about “Tell us once” being a possible mechanism for achieving that, but I do not think that it has lived up to its expectations in that regard. It has done a good job of reducing some of the bureaucracy, but it is not acting as a signpost to the best advice on how to navigate this complicated process. I would welcome the Government’s looking at signposting people to groups such as Quaker Social Action, and considering whether such a group could perform an ombudsman role. Yes, that would need to be funded—advice always needs to be funded—but I suspect that sufficient savings could be made in the administration of the benefit to fund Quaker Social Action to play that role.

Many would argue for some linkage between the social fund funeral payment and a defined “simple” funeral, and that suggestion perhaps causes the greatest concern. It is very hard culturally to define what a simple funeral would look like. Quaker Social Action has been cautious not to require those funeral directors signing its fair funeral pledge to guarantee to provide a simple funeral. Instead, it says that the funeral director should clearly advertise their cheapest available funeral.

We need to be careful not to go down the route of the state defining what type of funeral it is prepared to pay for. A lot of cultural elements circle around how we decide what is appropriate for our loved one. It is difficult to try to define what that simple funeral ought to look like.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Paul Maynard]

I am happy to, although I was just about to finish.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I thank the hon. Gentleman; I appreciate that I will be speaking in a second. I have spoken to a lot of funeral directors who have said that they already offer a simple funeral. That was something that I proposed in my Bill, and the industry was split down the middle—some were for it and some were against it. I just wanted to clarify the hon. Gentleman’s point.

[Paul Maynard]

I suspect that we are closer to agreement than the hon. Lady might realise. I know what a simple funeral would look like and I know what its pricing structure would be; I just get a little nervous about tying the social fund funeral payment to that precise model. There may be cultural or religious reasons why people need optional extras.

In summary—if I have left any time for the Minister and anybody else—I would welcome a bit more information on how we can get the basic data to make the right decision about whether this benefit is delivering on its policy intent. I think it can, I hope it will and I look forward to hearing what everybody else has to say.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David; I thank you for allowing me to sit through the debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) on securing the debate. Funeral debt affects a growing number of people, but the private nature of grief and the social pressure to provide a decent send-off means that those people do not always have a voice. One of the things that we should always do in this place is speak up for the voiceless so the hon. Gentleman has done those people a great service by calling this debate today.

Perhaps like other hon. Members, the issue first came to my attention through a constituent who had got into serious debt paying for their brother’s funeral. At the time, I assumed that such cases were relatively rare but, sadly, that is not the case. More than 100,000 people are living with funeral debt, while others struggle to meet the costs, end up selling their possessions, or turn to friends or family to cover the cost. These debts are significant. Royal London’s national funeral cost index shows that the average debt is £1,318.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend know that since 2004 there has been an 80% increase in the price of funerals, but wages and benefits have increased only fractionally in line with inflation—if not, they are struggling to keep up with inflation? The average social fund funeral payment was £1,225, which means that there is a huge gap in what is affordable. Would she congratulate Quaker Social Action on its excellent work in this regard?

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I would definitely like to thank Quaker Social Action, which I have done a lot of work with over the past 12 months. I am aware of some of the quite startling stats about this growing problem mentioned by my hon. Friend. I really do not think it is going to go away; it is going to get worse. Worryingly, as she said, the cost of a funeral service continues to rise well above the rate of inflation and the average debt is rising.

Losing a loved one, as most of us will sadly know, is one of the most difficult experiences we face in our lives. It shakes us and changes our world forever. In the middle of that personal turmoil, the last thing that people need is money worries. People will always feel a strong duty to do right by others when they depart, which makes it especially painful for those who are not able to provide what they see as a fitting service for their loved ones. That is why we need to have a really serious conversation about funeral affordability.

Hon. Members may be aware that in the previous Parliament I introduced a ten-minute rule Bill. The aim of my Funeral Services Bill was to approach some of the issues around funeral affordability. At the centre of the Bill was a call for the Government to carry out an overarching review of funeral affordability. When researching the issue, it quickly became clear how many factors affect the price of a funeral and how many Departments have a stake in it. Making funerals more affordable is not simple and requires co-operation between the Department for Communities and Local Government, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Department for Work and Pensions, and the Ministry of Justice; only a cross-departmental approach can work. I hope that the Minister can give us a commitment that the Government will begin to look strategically at funeral poverty.

I am aware that there is not enough time to cover everything, so I will focus on one thing that should be reformed urgently: the way in which social fund payments operate. Funeral payments give people much-needed support, but the system has some major flaws. A funeral payment covers all of an applicant’s necessary costs plus up to £700 of other costs. That might sound reasonable enough, but, in fact, those other costs include things such as funeral directors’ fees and ministers’ fees—things that we can agree most applicants would consider necessary. The £700 cap was set in 2003 and has not kept pace with the rising cost of funerals, so funeral payment awards are increasingly inadequate. The average award is just over £1,300 at a time when the average funeral costs £3,700. If the cap on other costs had risen with inflation, it would stand at just under £1,000 today. As we have heard, funeral costs rise even faster than inflation. Although I appreciate the comment by the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys that the social fund is a contribution, the reality is that if we want funeral payments to be fit for purpose, that cap needs to rise.

The other issue is the way applications are administered. At the moment, the DWP requires an invoice from the funeral organiser before it can process a claim, which means that people have to commit to a service before they know the value of the funeral payment they will receive. Inevitably, that means that some people commit to a funeral service they cannot afford and end up in severe debt. The process is completely backwards. The DWP urgently needs to look at how it can give applicants a clearer idea of the support they will receive, which will help people to make a more informed decision about the kind of service that is right for them.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

I add my support for Quaker Social Action and the work it has done on the matter. My hon. Friend is making a point about the people’s ability to plan funerals. Does she agree that we have to be very sensitive to communities when the speed at which someone is buried comes into play in being able to plan and cost accordingly, and to some of the risks that creates for those communities?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

My hon. Friend is correct; this does not only affect people who have the time to plan a funeral, which is short in itself. Some communities cannot plan—full stop—so that debt will be incurred by everybody across the board.

The decisions by the DWP are far too slow. Most funeral services, as we have said, are decided very quickly after a person’s death, but the average claim can take up to three weeks to process, which means that most people only find out whether they are entitled to support long after committing to costs. My Bill, among other things, called on the DWP to introduce an eligibility check to help applicants understand whether they are likely to receive support before they make any commitments to funeral costs. I hope that the Minister can update hon. Members on social fund funeral payments, and accept what his predecessors would not—that there are serious flaws in the current system. I would like him to tell us what he will do to improve the process.

When I introduced my Bill last year, I hoped to start a national conversation about funeral affordability. The Government and the wider public have become increasingly aware of the issue. This debate is a welcome continuation of that conversation, but it is about time that some of that talk is turned into action. I hope the Minister will tell us about some of that action today.

Amendment of the Law

Emma Lewell Excerpts

Monday 23rd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham). Last week, the Chancellor proved to us all just how out of touch and deluded he and his Government are. Apparently, people in my South Shields constituency have better living standards than they did in 2010, despite weekly pay across the north-east being the lowest in the country and dropping again just last week, prices continuing to rise, public sector jobs being shed at the rate of over 1,000 a month since 2010 and having 28,000 people in the north-east stuck on exploitative zero-hours contracts.

At the same time as the Chancellor was making his statement, one of my local food banks moved to larger premises to cope with the increase in the working poor they feed. That is hardly a record that any Chancellor should be proud of. When he boasts about full-time employment, what he fails to mention is that this includes those who are self-employed. The reality for many of the self-employed I have spoken to is that they are low paid: some do not even take a wage themselves and many do not work full time. It is worth noting the correlation between high levels of self-employment, low pay and poverty. We need look only at other EU countries where self-employment is high—Greece, Spain and Portugal, which are countries where working people are struggling.

On hearing the Chancellor’s speech, people in Shields will have concluded either that he does not know their pain or that he does not want to know. I bet he does know that many of the people taken out of the unemployment figures in Shields have not found employment at all, but have been unfairly sanctioned or ushered into meaningless training courses just so they do not show up in the stats. If so, the Chancellor is painting a picture he knows does not match up with what is really happening in our country—a picture that my constituents are far too smart to fall for: they will see right through it.

It was not only on living standards that the Chancellor’s hype did not match the reality. What about his so-called northern powerhouse? We were told to expect big announcements, but in our part of the north, there were next to no announcements at all. He mentioned the north-east once in his speech and for every five projects announced in London and the south-east, he announced one for the north-east.

Looking more closely at the Chancellor’s plans for our region, it appears that they are totally vacuous and simply an afterthought. The northern transport strategy document re-announced a number of projects, some of which are still not under way. There was no announcement on business rates. Talks about reopening a ferry route to Norway were “welcomed”, but without a commitment that the Government would do anything to make any of these things happen.

I have been a Member of this House for just under two years. Prior to that, I lived and worked under this Government, and I am telling the House now that things were tough—at times, really tough. Life beyond this place has got tougher for the people of this country. I wanted to be here to give a voice to the people in my constituency who have suffered under this Government, and to fight for a Labour Government because Labour has a different way—a fairer and more balanced way.

We know from the Office for Budget Responsibility that another five years of this Government will bring a level of pain that will be nothing like the pain people have already seen. People have a choice. They can opt for cuts to the vulnerable on a faster and crueller pace, deep and damaging cuts to our police, defence and social care budgets and total decimation of our NHS coupled with VAT rises, or they can choose Labour’s plans to make work pay and bring the deficit down in a more responsible way, while protecting vital services like our NHS.

I conclude with the observation that the sun is certainly not shining yet, but come May, it will be—when we have a Labour Government.

Personal Independence Payments

Emma Lewell Excerpts

Wednesday 21st January 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger, and to follow the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford), after the excellent introduction to the debate by my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce).

This Government have presided over a miserable few years for those who need to turn to the state for help. Those who do not find the door slammed in their faces still have to deal with the incompetence at the DWP that has led to benefit delays of as much as a year in some cases. Those people are genuinely terrified of what the future holds for them.

The Gray review echoes a lot of the concerns that Opposition Members have been raising for some time now, along with the hardship that the problems have caused for our constituents. But the review does not go far enough. My constituent Mr Mark Douglas has Parkinson’s, and applied for PIP in November 2013. After two months he had heard nothing from either the DWP or his assessor. When I chased Atos, it said it could not confirm an assessment date. It took persistent chasing from Parkinson’s UK and me on Mr Douglas’s behalf to get an appointment scheduled at the end of January, nearly three months after he had begun his claim.

It took a further three months and numerous letters for Mr Douglas to get a decision. All the while he had no updates from his assessor or from the DWP. The replies I was able to get from the Department were so vague as to be completely useless. When I asked when Mr Douglas would be notified of the DWP’s decision, the response was:

“We aim to make and notify decisions on most cases within 3 weeks. However, it may take less time than this, or longer.”

In other words, the Department was completely clueless. When I raised another constituent’s delay with the Prime Minister, he admitted it was unacceptable, but that was, sadly, nine months ago, and PIP claimants are still experiencing the same unacceptable problems. When on earth are the Government going to get a grip on this issue?

The overall PIP journey is an unpleasant one. The quality of assessments is uneven, assessors do not properly understand people’s conditions, communication with claimants is poor and decision letters are often unintelligible. All that will sound familiar to some of us: we have seen it all before from this Government with work capability assessments. WCAs do not take account of people’s fluctuating conditions. They may appear to be physically fine at their assessment but on a different day might be housebound; as a result, those people are wrongly declared fit for work. We are likely to see a lot of inaccurate PIP decisions appealed, just as we have seen one in three decisions on employment and support allowance appealed because of the poor quality of assessments.

The real problem, however, is one of delays. It is disappointing that the review does not go into further detail in that regard. Mr Gray explains in his foreword that he has “taken it as given” that the Government will be taking action to speed up the process, but sadly this Government’s record means that Opposition Members are unable to do the same.

I hope the Minister will explain what is being done to address the backlog. Will he share the data on the current lengths of time that people are waiting for their PIP claims to be processed? The delays must be the urgent priority, because later this year PIP will be opened up to all existing long-term DLA recipients. Until now, the PIP system has been dealing only with a minority of eligible people, so if it is in chaos now, how bad will things be in October?

Does the Minister not think that it would give a clear message to PIP recipients that the Government actually cared if they decided to halt the roll-out until they got the system right? Should the Government not be setting out clearly the monitoring arrangements they have in place for the estimated 500,000 disabled people who are going to lose out in the transition from DLA to PIP?

The review shows that the experience of claiming PIP is a nightmare. People do not have confidence in the assessments, or in the DWP’s ability to process their claims on time. These individuals are in many cases totally reliant on Government support, but right now the Government are showing that they cannot be relied upon. The DWP has failed to learn the lessons of the Work programme and universal credit, and is presiding over another disaster in PIP, yet it is our constituents who continue to pay the price under this heartless and shambolic Government.

Benefit Claimants (North-east)

Emma Lewell Excerpts

Wednesday 7th January 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Riordan. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) on securing the debate and on her passionate speech. We all know how the changes under this Government have victimised benefits claimants, and we have all met people who have suffered because of the harsh sanctions regime, but it is not only the law that has changed; the culture has changed, too. The jobcentre is a very different place from what it was just a few years ago. The focus has changed. It is no longer about getting people into work; it is about getting them off benefits by any means necessary.

My hon. Friend gave several examples, and things are no different in South Shields. Constituents of mine have been refused a private room to discuss intimate personal or medical issues, and have felt humiliated at having to hold such discussions in a public area. One man who was suffering from serious back pain and could barely climb the stairs was told that he could not use the lift because it was for staff only. The general attitude of staff is confrontational and sometimes downright rude. One man was told that he had to shut his mouth and get out when he disagreed with staff.

[Ian Lavery]

To highlight one of the difficulties with the staff, who generally do a fantastic job, the press reported on the assessment of a lady who is blind and has a guide dog. The person doing the assessment held three fingers up and asked the blind lady, “How many fingers am I holding up?” The lady said, “I am blind.” The person said, “That has nothing at all to do with it. I have to ask you the questions.” That is the way disabled people—in this case, a blind person—are being treated by some of the staff in jobcentres.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I have noticed that compassion and understanding are being completely removed from the jobcentre. There are no grey areas anymore; it is black or white. When I went to my local jobcentre to discuss some of my constituents’ complaints, I was shocked by how dismissive the local management team were. They explained that they refused to offer a private room because they did not want to set a precedent. In other cases, they simply said that they did not believe what I and my constituents were telling them. The whole attitude was completely negative and showed the confrontational way in which jobcentres now deal with claimants. In fact, the attitude shown to me was so appalling that I complained to the regional manager. It was not that I was particularly fussed by how they spoke to me; my concern was that if they speak to a Member of Parliament in that way, how on earth are they treating our constituents?

Jobcentre staff are ultimately there to provide a service, and to help people find work. If someone has special requirements, staff should be allowed to accommodate them. The Government’s hard-line approach and the pressure on staff to meet targets mean that the focus has changed and the majority of hard-working staff, who I genuinely believe want to do their jobs properly, feel hindered and frustrated about being unable to do so. When I was looking for work, advisers were there to guide jobseekers into work or training that was right for them. It was a process that treated people like human beings. That is important when people are already feeling low or marginalised because of their unemployment. That is not how the system works today. Now the role of the jobcentre is to police the unemployed and punish them for making even the smallest of mistakes. If they are five minutes late for an appointment, there is no mercy or discussion—their benefits are simply cut off. Where once staff were there to advise, they are now told to check up on claimants, to police them and to catch them out.

As far as I am concerned, our jobcentres are no longer providing a good enough service. Staff are under pressure to get people off benefits by any means necessary, and there are perverse incentives to push people on to make-work courses. Constituents have complained that they have been ordered to take the same CV writing courses over and over again as a substitute for genuine support. That is a complete waste of time and does not get them into work. What it does, however, is remove them from the unemployment figures. Like those on the Work programme, they are not employed in any meaningful sense, but they do not show up in the figures. I make it crystal clear to the Minister that being on the Work programme or stuck on make-work training courses does not constitute employment, no matter how much her Government would like us to think so. The only purpose of the schemes is to help a jobcentre meet its targets, because it can use the courses as evidence that it has provided training or work-related activity, or use non-attendance as a reason to sanction benefit claimants.

In any organisation, the attitude of those at the top filters down. That is why the culture change at the DWP fits right in with the ugly attitude that the Government have taken towards people on benefits. They have encouraged and continue to encourage the public to think of claimants as spongers or skivers, so that working people struggling to get by will blame the unemployed man or woman next door, claiming their £70 a week, instead of the tax-dodging companies that cost our economy billions every year. The way claimants are treated is nothing to do with getting people into work; it is about scapegoating the poor and making them a target for the anger and frustration the public feel during a time of serious hardship. It is downright nasty politics, and the Government should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

Oral Answers to Questions

Emma Lewell Excerpts

Monday 1st September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

My hon. Friend is right. Last year, welfare spending fell in real terms for the first time in 16 years as a share of GDP, and will continue to do so. In 2010, spending was at 12.5%, and next year it will be at 11.9%. By 2015-16, the out-of-work benefit bill will fall back to pre-recession levels, down to 2.3% of GDP. It peaked under the last Government at nearly 3% of GDP.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

The Government claim that they are tackling what they call dependency on welfare. In the north-east, the number of working households claiming housing benefit has shot up by two thirds because wages are failing to keep up with rent. Will the Secretary of State admit that without action to tackle low pay or deal with soaring rents, the welfare bill will continue to rise?

Oral Answers to Questions

Emma Lewell Excerpts

Monday 23rd June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

I am really proud that the coalition Government have introduced this new scheme. It is now fully funded and it is rolling out on time. Payments will be made on time to the people who need those funds so much, through no fault of their own, and we are all very proud of that.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

T4. My local citizens advice bureau has been contacted by a young single woman who has been hit by the bedroom tax. After paying her rent and utility bills, she has just 84p a day left to spend on food and toiletries. With eight households for each available one-bedroom property in my area, moving is simply not an option. How can the Secretary of State continue to try to justify a policy that results in such extreme poverty?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

We have given local authorities between £300 million and £400 million for discretionary payments. It is their job to ensure that individuals with particularly difficult circumstances can be helped with that money. The overall policy is very simple. It is about people who are living in accommodation that they do not fully utilise, and about others, including the quarter of a million left by the last Government in overcrowded circumstances and the 1 million people on waiting lists. I do not think that the hon. Lady has ever got up and asked a question about those people. The reality is that this policy will help them to get the accommodation they need to improve their lives, and not waste it on people who do not need it.

amendment of the law

Emma Lewell Excerpts

Tuesday 25th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Inverclyde (Mr McKenzie).

Much of the post-Budget media coverage has focused on what the Chancellor’s measures mean to the average member of the public, but debates about the average do not translate very well in my constituency. In South Shields, people are more likely than the average to be unemployed, or to be in part-time work or on a zero-hours contract. They are more likely to have a disability or long-term condition and to be living in fuel or food poverty. The reality is that the Chancellor offered next to nothing for those households, and they are the very people his Government’s policies have hit worst of all.

Under the coalition’s cost of living crisis, families in my constituency have seen their incomes fall relative to prices month after month. They are twice as likely to be unemployed as they were five years ago, and those out of work, nearly four in 10, have been unemployed for 12 months or more. If they are lucky enough to have a job, there is a one in four chance it will be part time, and for those on part-time contracts, hours have fallen since 2010. The situation is even worse for the young. The number of 16 to 24-year-olds out of work for 12 months or more has increased more than 10 times under the coalition.

Now that we are finally seeing a return to growth, this Budget should have been an opportunity to help the people who have suffered hugely during the recession. Instead the Chancellor all but ignored them. He said this was a Budget for savers, but that will mean nothing to those whose incomes are so squeezed that they have nothing left at the end of the month to put aside. What little savings some people have are being spent right now to cover the gap between their income and their living costs. That is a growing problem.

The Office for Budget Responsibility reports that the savings ratio will fall by a fifth this year, and the Bank of England’s figures show that families are drawing on their savings at record levels, at a sum of about £900 for each household in the country. The Chancellor tells us that he wants to reward savers, but many people do not have that option. Raising ISA limits to £15,000 does not make my constituents more likely to save; in fact, that is more than most of them would ever earn in a year.

People who can take advantage of that policy will do well out of it, but they are already quite comfortable if they have that kind of money to put aside. The Chancellor will reward those people, who might put off buying a new car or taking a holiday to save a little more, for their responsibility, but I want to know how he will reward the responsibility of my constituents who sacrifice hot meals to give them to their children.

Government Members have pointed out some of the patronising gimmicks the Chancellor threw into the Budget to convince people that he is on their side: a cut in beer duty and lower duty for bingo halls. Once again, he proved how out of touch he and the Government parties are. People in my constituency do not have beer and bingo at the forefront of their concerns. They care about the dignity that decent, well-paid work gives them. They care about providing for their families. They care about being able to pay their bills and to afford to eat. To put it simply, bingo and beer are far from the minds of those queuing at food banks.

The Government argue that raising the personal allowance has the effect of helping those who are worst off, but again the reality is far from the rhetoric. The Resolution Foundation has pointed out that the 5 million lowest earners will not get a penny because they already earn less than the personal allowance. One in four workers in my constituency is in part-time work and many earn the minimum wage. Those people are not earning enough to feel any effect from the threshold being raised. They are the people who are suffering the most, yet the Government’s flagship policy for helping the poorest brings them no benefits whatsoever.

Single-earner households, which are more common among low-income groups, benefit half as much as dual earners even though they clearly have greater need. As if that was not enough, the vast majority of gains from raising the personal allowance are expected to be wiped out when universal credit is introduced, as that system calculates people’s benefit entitlement on post-tax rather than pre-tax income. People who receive benefits or tax credits might see their incomes rise because they are paying less tax, but for every extra pound they keep they will lose 65p in universal credit. It is therefore poorly targeted as a policy for helping the worst off.

The Prime Minister and the Chancellor have claimed that we are all in this together, yet this was not a Budget for the whole country, just as this is not a recovery for the whole country. Yes, it is true that families on all incomes have found things harder in recent years, but the effect has been felt most strongly in constituencies such as mine. As far as my constituents are concerned, there is no recovery. They face yet another miserable year ahead under this miserable Government.

Oral Answers to Questions

Emma Lewell Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I call Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

T6. Violent attacks on betting shop workers are on the rise and single-staffing policies mean that many have minimal protection from harm. Yet in many shops operators have not installed protective screens for their staff until after an incident has occurred. Will the Minister look at requiring all betting shops to install screens for the safety and benefit of the staff?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mrs Helen Grant)]

Local authorities that are concerned about any betting shop can use their licensing conditions, which were used very successfully by Newham when it had concerns about crime, antisocial behaviour and under-age gambling. With regard to the number of staff in shops, licensing conditions can again be used.

Oral Answers to Questions

Emma Lewell Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

I am slightly baffled by that question, because our reforms to the state pension will affect everyone who reaches state pension age after 2016. That is almost the entire working age population. Is the hon. Gentleman really suggesting that we should write 40 million letters?

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

12. What assessment he has made of the appropriateness of the eligibility criteria for funeral payments allocated from the social fund.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)]

It is important that help is targeted at those who are least well off at the time the need arises. The Government therefore firmly believe that the qualifying criteria for the funeral payments should be linked to the receipt of one of a number of income-related benefits.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I thank the Minister for his response, but the reality is that almost one in five people struggles to pay the cost of a funeral service for a member of their family, and more and more are taking on debts so that they can afford to pay for a service for their loved one. Will the Minister therefore consider adjusting the criteria so that families suffering emotional hardship need not experience financial hardship as well?

[Steve Webb]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her question. We have expanded the scope of the budgeting loans scheme to include funeral costs, which were not previously eligible. If someone is short of cash to meet funeral costs, they can borrow money through the social fund if they are eligible for a budgeting loan, as well as applying for the grant that we pay, which averages £1,200.

Oral Answers to Questions

Emma Lewell Excerpts

Monday 14th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The Chancellor and I of course discuss these matters quite regularly, and the reality is that he is very interested in this scheme. The truth is that a successful economy relies on new business start-ups. This plays exactly into the right arena. In comparison with competitors all over the world, new business start-ups and new businesses are providing the way for us to be successful. I am sure that the Chancellor will readily take my hon. Friend’s suggestions.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

5. What assessment he has made of the performance of Atos Healthcare in delivering occupational health assessments.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Mike Penning)]

In the last week, I have looked carefully at the key performance indicators for delivery times, which have been met or exceeded. In the last 12 months, they have gone from 93% to the contracted target of 97%.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

Last year, my constituent Alan Johnson, a dedicated paramedic, was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. At 55 years of age, he was advised to retire early. Atos went on to ignore the advice of his GP and his specialist, refused him a medical and told him that he had not had the condition long enough to qualify, and then forced him to return to work. Will the Minister meet me to discuss this appalling case so that Mr Johnson can receive the pension he is due?

[Mike Penning]

Of course I will meet the hon. Lady, but there is an appeals process, and I suggest her constituent goes through that full process—in case he has not—before we meet, as we do not want jeopardise an appeal in any way. This was a problem we inherited from the previous Administration. Occupational health assessments were set up under Atos in 2008; it was not great, but we are working hard to sort it out.